IIP 








ClassJ 3Ml 
Book_. • fei. 



By R. de Maulde la Claviere 



WOMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE: 

A Study of Feminism. Translated by George 
Herbert Ely. 8% with portrait . . net, $3.50 

THE ART OF LIFE. Translated by George 
Herbert Ely. 8". (By mail, $1.85) net, $1.75 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 



THE ART OF LIFE 



BY 

R. DE MAULDE LA CLAVIERE 

TRANSLATED BY 

GEORGE HERBERT ELY 



" A wise woman is a gift of the Lord " 

ECCLESIASTICUS 




NEW YORK 
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 and 29 West 23D St. 
1902 









Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co. 
At the Ballantyne Press 






^ To 

^Madame la Duchesse d'Ursel 

{nee Mun) 
Madam, 

Here is a little book, historical rather than philo- 
sophical. It has often happened that people disillu- 
sionised of life have steadfastly resolved henceforth to see 
it only through the prism of beautiful things, and to 
content themselves with gathering as much as possible of 
its flower. 

That, in the main, is the idea that I have tried to 
develop, and to adapt to the present tii?ie. 

This unpretentious volume calls for no long dedica- 
tion ; yet suffer me to offer it you in all simplicity, in 
memory of our grave talks at Mont Dore, of which you 
will here and there, perhaps, light upon some trace. 

R. M. 



/ desire to thank Mr. Henry Newbolt for permission to 
reprint those pages of this book which first appeared, 
tentatively, i?i the Monthly Review. And to record my 
obligation to my friends Colonel H. A. Ker and Mr. 
David Frew for much useful criticism and suggestion; 
to Mr. Frew also for carefully collating the whole book 
with the original text; and especially to Mr. Walter 
Herries Pollock, who generously allowed me to consult 
him on certain points, to the great advantage of my 
rendering. 

G. H. E. 



CONTENTS 



PART THE FIRST 
THE LOWER LIFE 

CHAl'. PAGE 

I. A DOUBLE CARNATION 3 

II. THE HARD LIFE 7 

III. OF RESTLESSNESS IO 

IV. OF THE HAPPINESS OF DOING NOTHING . . 14 
V. WHERE SHALL WE SEEK THE ART OF LIFE? . 19 

VI. THE NECESSARY COMMUNISM 23 

VII. THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 31 

VIII. THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MEN 42 

IX. THE TRUE GUIDE TOWARDS THE ART OF LIFE . 46 

X. VOICES DEAD AND LIVING . . . . - S° 

XI. THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN .... 56 



PART THE SECOND 
THE MIDDLE LIFE 



I. CREATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT . 


75 


11. NATURE 


81 


III. THE ART OF THINGS 


89 


IV. THE ART OF IDEAS 


105 


V, THE ART OF SELF 


112 


VI. MODESTY 


135 


VII. THE HIGH CROSS 


149 



viii CONTENTS 



PART THE THIRD 

THE FLOWER OF LIFE 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART . . . .159 

II. MARRIED LIFE 1 72 

III. THE NECESSARY AFFECTIONS 1 86 

IV. SOCIAL AFFECTION 1 93 

V. RELATIONSHIPS 204 

VI. CONVERSATION 212 

VII. "A MAN IS JUDGED BY WHAT HE LOVES" . .221 

VIII. THE DIVINE PLAN 228 

IX. A REASONABLE FOLLY 236 

PART THE FOURTH 
THE FRUITS OF LIFE 

I. THE WILL 245 

II. ACTION 259 

III. JOY 267 

IV. DESIRE 270 

PART THE FIFTH 

THE HIGHER LIFE 

i. the assault of sorrow 279 

ii. the maladies of sensibility .... 282 

iii. the sources of sorrow 287 

iv. a moral pharmacopoeia 29 1 

v. through sorrow to love 300 

vi. the garden of roses and the vale of tears 310 

vii. " every life has its romance and its history " 313 

viii. mammon, or life? 318 

ix. "hitch your waggon to a star" . . . 322 

conclusion 334 



PART THE FIRST 
THE LOWER LIFE 



CHAPTER THE FIRST 

A DOUBLE CARNATION 

" Bien lire l'univers, c'est lire la vie. 

Le monde est l'oeuvre ou rien ne meurt et ne 

devie, 
Et dont les mots sacres repandent de l'encens. 
L'homme injuste est celui qui fait des con- 

tresens. 
On voit les champs, mais c'est de Dieu qu'on 
s'eblouit."— V. Hugo. 

" L'univers tout entier reflechit ton image, 
Et mon ame, a son tour, reflechit l'univers." 1 
— Lamartine. 

By Art I mean the cult of the Beautiful, provok- 
ing sympathy and love. 

Beauty ! Does it play in our life a necessary 
part ? 

We need but open our eyes to see things of 
beauty around us, and to perceive in beauty the 
fulfilment of the law of their being. 

Nature is a great artist, who reveals to us the 

1 [Rightly to read the universe is reading life. The world's a book 
in which there is neither death nor error ; whose hallowed words 
diffuse a perfume. The unrighteous man is he who reads amiss. We 
see the fields, but it is with God our eyes dazzle. 

The whole wide universe reflects thy image, and my soul in its turn 
reflects the universe.] 

3 



4 THE ART OF LIFE 

true way of life ; her method is selection, and 
beauty her goal. In the neighbourhood of Mont 
Dore, for example, you walk on delicious carpets 
of pansies, yellow asters, thyme, carnations, flowers 
innumerable. Herein is Nature's art. Month 
after month she has gathered her forces, germi- 
nated, toiled, analysed, wrought miracles in physics 
and chemistry, to arrive at this result — a flower. 

She is all beauty. How she belies the thesis 
of her undisciplined lovers, to whose imagination 
she is all violence, and wildness, and horror ! — 
who would fain set up a precipice in their draw- 
ing-room ! 

She smiles, looking for a higher life. 

These pink carnations are all alike : blessings 
on the man, he too an artist, who lays a com- 
pelling hand on them, to assort them, and bring 
them to a higher perfection still ! 

Transformed from a single to a double blossom 
by a new culture, the carnation typifies what has 
been well called " the fruitage of legitimate desires," 
in other words, progress. 

Winsome flower, in this little nosegay composed 
so daintily, so thoughtfully, radiant in thy many- 
coloured comeliness ! Assuredly a handful of herbs 
culled at random could never please so well. This 
posy gives me an idea of perfection. 

At the point where thy normal life was stayed, 



A DOUBLE CARNATION 5 

a superior hand took seisin of thee, to continue 
the movement, and raise thee above thyself. Now 
thou hast a healthy flower, a fragrant flesh, many 
and various hues — pure, gay, bright, living : a 
feast for mortal eyes. Nay more, thou art my 
friend, dost clasp and hold me with thy exquisite 
perfume. What didst thou on those heights, in 
single scentlessness ? Thou wert wont to give 
me nothing : thee I could but contemplate, or 
crush under my feet ; whereas flowers of subtle 
scent are fays who know our need of tenderness, 
and faith, and intimate fellowship above all, and 
who seek us out and penetrate our being. This 
carnation fills my room ; good it is, and beautiful. 
I love it as a dear friend. 

By like laws is the whole world governed ; for 
flower and animal and man alike the rules are 
one, differing solely in their mode of operation. 
Hence this modest flower is a perfect index of the 
course we should pursue. It has passed through 
the three great stages we discern in every life- 
history. First, the stage of law : born in humility, 
its growth was painful ; secondly, the stage of 
beauty : it developed, put forth its blossom, multi- 
plied its seed ; lastly, it gave birth to a higher 
life, whence its double form, its wealth of colour, 
its sweet scent. 

So should the art of our life be also : to draw 



6 THE ART OF LIFE 

from ourselves all that we are capable of yielding, 
to set in motion all our elements of vitality, to 
blossom to the full. 

There are people who out of good itself evolve 
evil : set them in a garden of roses, they will find it 
a mere wilderness of thorns. The art of life con- 
sists, not in forcing or colouring or adapting life, 
but in the ability from its very evil to bring forth 
good. The whole problem is to grow double 
carnations instead of single, for the sweetening 
of our existence. This problem you may solve, if 
you will. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND 

THE HARD LIFE 

"All men have but one yearning in com- 
mon : the yearning for life and happiness. 
In this lies the actual bond linking all men 
together." — Richard Wagner. 

Life is hard at bottom. If perchance you yourself 
have not suffered, go into the slums of your city 
and see the human animal ; contemplating those 
wan, grave faces, with their look of utter weariness 
and woe, you will understand how life is built up, 
what a hot-bed of misery and squalor helps to root 
us in the earth. Our life emanates from death. 
Life kills. 

This primal rigour is due to the urgent need of 
food and clothing and shelter. We are all cradled 
between ox and ass ; every living creature has its 
origin in animality ; life, compact of instinct and 
energy, resists the tempest by means of the firm- 
ness of its roots, and by its very ruggedness — but 
does the oak leap exultant as he withstands the 
blast ? 

Many a time we hear our poets belauding the 



8 THE ART OF LIFE 

earth, her alleged tractableness, her smiles : 'tis 
rhyme without reason ! The man of the fields, 
living in close contact with the primal struggle, 
is persistently prosaic. Your guide, your cicerone, 
will admire the beauty of things ; the crowd will 
have no inkling of it ; to them a rock is a mass of 
stone, a cloud is wetness. Their only touch of 
art is a somewhat fatalistic philosophy. They do 
not exult in intellectual activity or self-analysis ; 
don't ask them if the eye consists of well-drilled 
microbes, or if man is a bundle of efforts towards 
a higher life. They see and act ; that is enough 
for them ; and reflexion itself, with them, some- 
times does instinct a disservice, just as, though to 
spell correctly becomes in general an automatic 
process, yet, if we pause at a word and reflect, we 
are at a loss how to write it. 

The stress of life produces strength, endurance, 
fretfulness, boredom, a stunted spiritual life — for 
the trees that shoot up most loftily into the heavens 
are slender of stem. It hardens the skin ; and 
certainly we can only look with respectful admira- 
tion at men who have reached a stage of endurance 
where a blow is preferable to a caress. I know 
nothing so genuinely beautiful as the lives of 
certain women, who devote themselves to hus- 
band and children with a self-sacrifice, a courage, 
and a silence beyond praise. Monetary worries, 



THE HARD LIFE o 

children's ailments, husband's vices — all are power- 
less to crush their spirit. And in all this there is a 
beauty so real that heroic and lofty natures have 
sometimes succumbed to its fascination, and found 
happiness in the sacred madness of self-immolation. 
History shows us enthusiasms of this kind pushed 
to a very sublimity of frenzy. 

And yet present trials can only be truly loved so 
far as they intensify the desire or hope for future 
happiness. In this regard the rigour of life is 
precious, a deep fountain of delights ; it quickens 
our aptitude for joy. Assuredly it is right to inure 
your children to hardship, so that one day they 
may be healthy and happy, and bless you in their 
hearts ! But while we ought not to shrink from 
the inevitable rudenesses of life, still less ought we 
to brood upon them, and let the harsh aspects of 
existence monopolise our thoughts. The life that 
is really hard is the life of gloom. And sorrow 
springs more often from the way we take things 
than from the things themselves. 

Be strong, then, to throw off the strain and 
stress ! Do not go open-armed to meet misfortune, 
or aggravate it by imaginary woes. Be resolute to 
nourish life into bloom. Take pity upon yourselves, 
and begin by bidding sorrow avaunt. 



CHAPTER THE THIRD 

OF RESTLESSNESS 

" In man's life there are but three incidents : 
birth, life, death. Of his birth he knows no- 
thing; to die is agony ; and life he forgets." — 
La Bruyere. 

"I said then to myself: Imagine that you 
have obtained all that you can wish for in this 
life ; imagine that you can accomplish in an in- 
stant all the changes in institutions and opinions 
that you are ambitious to bring about : would 
this be great joy and happiness to you ? And a 
voice in my conscience that nothing could stifle 
made answer : No." — John Stuart Mill. 

Many people think that life cannot be filled better 
than by dint of excitements. Tell me frankly, 
does this lend charm to life ? Life is what it is ; 
why should we kill ourselves in painting its stucco ? 
It would often be doing us a service were some 
one to show us the ridiculous side of a crowd of 
obligations and ambitions in which we consume 
ourselves, vainly. To do this thing or that be- 
cause " everybody does it," to know everybody, to 
catch the fleeting moment, to think everybody's 
thoughts, to see what every one sees, to eat the 



OF RESTLESSNESS n 

fashionable kickshaws and suffer from the fashion- 
able complaint, to reel under the prodigious 
exertion of doing nothing — truly a fine object in 
life, this : the life of a circus horse or a squirrel. 
The world will regard us with admiration, may- 
hap ; but the physician before whom we presently 
collapse after our surfeit will treat us as de- 
generates. 

He will tell us to quit Paris and fly to the sea 
or the mountains. Stuff ! 'tis not the air of Paris 
that is unwholesome ; what is unwholesome is its 
moral atmosphere. Still, I do find it a little hard 
to understand how a Parisian, constantly beset 
by risks so various, can reach manhood limb- 
whole, unmaimed. To be alive ! — that is the 
marvel. 

And many people, amid these futile activities, 
pass life by after all without touching it. Who 
they were is never known ; you only see their 
gestures. In sooth, there must be many serious 
people among the clowns at the fair, judging by 
the number of clowns and fribbles among serious 
people. 

Not a few of the grave men I happen to meet, 
lawyers, bankers, men of business, are not really 
men at all ; they are merely lawyers, bankers, 
men of business. Is this happiness ? 

Mr. Rockefeller, the Oil King, has fallen into a 



12 THE ART OF LIFE 

melancholy. Like Charles V, he desires to abdi- 
cate ; but this dream is still to him a fresh source 
of trouble and sorrow, for he seeks a mortal of 
fit mould and temper to wield the sceptre in his 
stead, and, though he scours two hemispheres, 
this mortal is nowhere discoverable. 

Will it astonish you, Madam, if I avouch that 
this rage of unrest has set its mark upon some of 
your sex ? Would not you yourself think it a 
slight on your reputation if you were even suspected 
of being a stay-at-home ? Conversation, writing 
— what outworn, antiquated things ! You fling 
out your words, your notes, in the style of a 
tradesman's list or a telegram ; you are seen in the 
paddock or the polo-field, on charitable commit- 
tees, in presidential chairs ; since man is master, 
you think you are winning a place among the 
engulfing sex by adopting mannish modes whole- 
sale. 

The most charming of women will cut, at best, 
but a poor figure as a man ; and I cannot, in truth, 
see what there is in the spectacle of the masculine 
hurly-burly to attract women who might well live 
in quietness. To be endlessly getting and spend- 
ing, to turn all things to laughter and take nothing 
seriously, to be altogether insensible — oh, a fine 
philosophy ! With all his wealth and titles and 
decorations, many a man comes to crawling on 



OF RESTLESSNESS 13 

all fours, and even finds exceeding comfort in 
his proneness, like the good soul who, being 
changed into a hog by the enchantress Circe, 
refused point-blank to resume his former feature. 
But all our restless strivings represent in reality 
nothing but a varnish of egoism, wherefore 
we cannot desire a woman to take pleasure in 
them. Moreover, she would have to force her 
nature to attain an egoism so perfect. Such 
egoism is very rare among you, ladies ; and often, 
after the loss of those you love has driven you 
within your last entrenchments, it happens that 
Death comes, rather than Forgetfulness. 



CHAPTER THE FOURTH 

OF THE HAPPINESS OF DOING NOTHING 

Shall we at least find joy in the happiness of 
doing nothing ? 

I recognise that, for some women, there is a 
measure of practical wisdom in remaining idle. 
Unaccustomed to anything that can be called 
work, constrained often to periods of real, en- 
forced, idleness, they prefer to avoid all serious 
undertakings, lest their activity. prove mere beating 
of the air. 

This attitude of mind is familiar to many men 
also, if they have an income however small, or 
merely the hope of espousing one. They tell 
themselves that work brings worry, breeds jealousy 
and envy : ignorance has its art — the art of shining 
inexpensively ; and all you have to do for the 
applause you covet is to unveil a statue in honour 
of some philosopher comfortably dead and buried. 
Meanwhile, it is so pleasant a sensation, so con- 
ducive to the peace and order of your country, 
to smoke your cigar without one thought, one 
desire, one aspiration ! 



OF DOING NOTHING 15 

So pleasant ! But stay, my dear sir, let me 
deal fairly with you : you are always doing some- 
thing, even though it be only smoking, hunting, 
reading the newspaper, emitting your political 
views, riding, eating, digesting. Only, these occu- 
pations are useless to your neighbours. It is very 
lucky, you will admit, that all men do not profess 
the same principles of ideal parasitism, for then, 
who would give you to eat ? 

If we could but hug the assurance that wretched- 
ness is the rightful heritage of the poor, and splen- 
dour the rightful heritage of the rich, we might 
beseech the poor to batten on the odours exhaled 
from your kitchens. But no : uselessness seeks 
to foist itself as a mark of distinction, and vanity, 
often more ravenous than hunger, excites violent 
social strictures, especially among workmen of 
some intelligence, and sufficiently well off already 
to have an inkling of what luxury means. 

Unhappily, our progress in material things serves 
only to develop this sense of luxury, by establish- 
ing on all sides contacts purely material. Money, 
and money alone, classifies the passengers on the 
railway ; we all become mere parcels, some in 
wadding, others not. We are estimated by the 
weight of our money, though that is commonly a 
cause of moral feebleness, or at least of sloth. 
Will social happiness, any more than personal 



16 THE ART OF LIFE 

happiness, be found in this glorification of material 
indolence and the aristocracy of pleasure ? It 
seems not, judging by the jealousy that devours our 
whole society, from top to bottom. There is end- 
less talk of solidarity, fraternity : that is the court 
dress of the present day — not, as of old, wigs and 
knee-breeches. But never was egoism so in- 
tolerant ; never, consequently, was the tedium of 
life so grievous. 

Men mightily deceive themselves by indulging 
all their life long the dream of an easy time — 
retirement from business, quiet days of fishing, 
and so on ; seeking a path to this happiness by 
way of a life of inelastic limitations. " I am not 
an utter fool," a Frenchman will tell you: "as 
you are aware, I am a decent fellow, though I 
say so — a public servant, naturally, like all French- 
men — a good citizen, and a member of no end 
of societies — academies, too, I assure you. Among 
the Ministers I serve, at least one out of two 
seems an absolute ass. Oh, but I serve him ! 
Simple obedience to rule makes you happy ; that 's 
the thing for peace and promotion. My wife is 
so devout that she positively does harm to re- 
ligion ; she is driving me to agnosticism ; not 
that it really matters ; indeed, I recognise that 
in my wife's piety there is a narrow, slavish, so 
to say utilitarian side, which it is well to inculcate 



OF DOING NOTHING 17 

upon women, so as to silence argument and stifle 
thought. And as to work, and the money it 
brings in — well, I take just as much as I need. 
You can't imagine, dear fellow, how easy and 
familiar work becomes when you are used to it, 
and do it mechanically. It's like your morning 
tub — becomes a positive mania. When I am on 
holiday, getting a taste of Nature in my garden 
at Clamart, I feel quite lost, and have half a mind 
to go to the office. Still, I look forward with 
lively impatience to the goal of my life, the time 
for retiring. Talking of that, I quite envy the far 
niente of my neighbour, a decent little retired 
grocer. And, after all, not being miserly, thank 
Heaven, or stuck-up, I do feel that money is only 
a means ; it 's a good thing so far as it relieves 
us of exertion. For the most part, men only 
want to get rich out of sheer pride, just to have 
more than their neighbour. I myself have the 
sense to believe, like the English, that money 
becomes respectable when you begin to spend 
it. O the joy of doing nothing, and letting others 
slave for you ! — the delights of taking it easy, 
loafing, lolling the time away ! Governments could 
never give you too much encouragement. How 
easy they make it to govern a country, and what 
satisfaction they procure for the governed them- 
selves ! " 

B 



18 THE ART OF LIFE 

That is how most of us talk. Our life is either 
whirl or stagnation. To the women who do 
nothing, as well as to all these mechanical gentle- 
men, to those who are enamoured of the world, 
and to persons flourishing and waxing fat, may 
I present the woman of my dream ? She has 
formed the habit of living so actively on the joys 
and sorrows of others ; she has sustained, encour- 
aged, helped others so often, shared so many fears 
and hopes, seen so much of birth and death, lived 
so full a life ; that beneath her blanching hair her 
heart finds it impossible to retire from the service. 
It grows and grows. Her activity, always fruitful, 
brings forth ever more and more. A clear proof 
that there must be a special secret. 



CHAPTER THE FIFTH 

WHERE SHALL WE SEEK THE ART OF LIFE? 

" I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to 
know madness and folly : I perceived that this 
also is vexation of spirit." — Eccles. i. 17. 

"The beauty of all things, even to the 
meanest of the minerals, proclaims God." — 
St. Bonaventure. 



To Madame 



Madame, — Do you remember a walk (romantic, 
shall I call it ?) we took one evening under a lovely 
iridescent sky ? Here and there we saw a few 
human ants, so to speak ; one man was pitting 
potatoes with his wife, another was collecting them 
from the field, a third was mowing, establishing 
with unvarying regularity of sweep a close-shorn 
equality around him. Earth, sky, the whole pro- 
spect was delightful ; but we alone rejoiced in it ; 
not one of those poor people so much as raised his 
eyes. That scene suggested to me the writing 
of this little book. For our natural development 
should only lead us to the enjoyment of beauty. 
As soon as a man has assured his life, he thinks of 
embellishing it ; if he has no such thought, it is 



20 THE ART OF LIFE 

because he still remains at the lower stage. So 
with societies : they know nothing of artistic evolu- 
tion, but recognise only economic evolution ; and 
the movements to which the name ( renaissance ' 
is given imply merely that a people has made its 
fortune, and is young enough to wish to enjoy it. 
Ring out the hour of work, ring in the hour of 
sensibility. 

But how is the appeal to sensibility to be made ? 
We must love something, but what ? 

Some one suggests a love for the intellect in its 
highest manifestation — science, to wit. But is that 
an infallible prescription for universal happiness ? 
In the first place, not every mortal man can love 
science : the world in general is concerned only 
with its practical results ; you expect the pear-tree 
to yield pears, medicine to cure you, and a train to 
make good running ; but did you ever fall in love 
with a tunnel or the permanent way ? Secondly, 
science, even when you love her, proves a some- 
what ungrateful mistress ; she yields to you but 
grudgingly ; she solves one question only to pro- 
pound another ; she offers a helping hand, but, 
having stated her problem, leaves you gaping for 
its solution. Work by no means spells happiness ; 
and in vaunting the joys of the intellectual life, in 
persuading ourselves that restlessness of mind will 
fill the heart, we are bound in the long run to sink 



WHERE SHALL WE SEEK IT? 21 

into "futility, uncertainty, and sorrow/' as Pascal 
said. The elements of society that are purely 
sentimental and not scientific — family, marriage, 
fatherland — tend to disappear, and with what do 
we replace them ? With nothing ; as a matter of 
fact they are replaced by alcoholism, or what you 
will, for man must and will have his hours of 
dreaming ! 

Moralists, for their part, like M. Oll^-Laprune, 
confound the idea of beauty, not with the idea of 
work, but with the idea of virtue. Virtue, they 
declare, is beauty enough for them, and the con- 
sciousness of a duty fulfilled ought fully to appease 
our thirst for love. I am irresistibly reminded of 
the lament of an extremely ugly woman : "Women 
never get due credit for remaining virtuous." 

I do not mean to say, of course, that evil is 
beautiful. Evil, in my belief, has no positive exist- 
ence ; it is a want of vitality, a warped vigour, a 
stunted growth, and consequently an anti-aesthetic 
fact. The Book of Genesis puts forward a magni- 
ficent thesis in this regard : God is the creator, not 
of evil, but of liberty. The first man was a rare, 
choice plant, living without effort in such ordered 
unvarying happiness as a vegetable may enjoy. 
Instead of this earthy joy, God in His compassion 
gives him a wife, work to do, and liberty to sin 
— in other words, the implements necessary for 



22 THE ART OF LIFE 

securing a different kind of happiness, which other- 
wise he would never have known. Thus it may 
be said that the knowledge of good' and evil is 
itself only a sort of science, a method, a means 
towards a higher life, not life itself. Nothing in 
itself is either good or bad : evil consists in the 
abuse, or the insufficient use, of things. 

Between dignity and pride, love and lust, prudence 
and avarice, there is only a shade, depending on the 
nicest variation of mental bias. " David did evilly 
in desiring to drink water, Esau foolishly in eating 
lentils. But God permitteth Noah to eat of any 
beast that agreeth with his stomach," — a sentence I 
have just unearthed in St. Augustine. 

In a word, Madame, science (the science of ethics 
included) seems to me the skeleton or framework 
of life, — the stalk of the flower, the sketch for the 
picture, the grammar of the discourse, debentures 
as distinct from the dividend warrant. It is never 
anything but a groundwork or preparation. Mere 
reason pencils the sketch ; some one must come 
and lay on the colours. 

But who will this be ? If the majority of us men 
are suffocating in our reason or unreason from lack 
of sensibility, may we not say that it is woman's 
part to widen our lives ? Should we not be ad- 
vancing if we journeyed towards the country of 
the heart ? 



CHAPTER THE SIXTH 

THE NECESSARY COMMUNISM 

" L'homme est un point qui vole avec deux ailes, 
Dont l'une est la pensee et dont l'autre est 
1'amour." 1 — Victor Hugo. 

We see the good and do it not, because we are 
unable to love it. Thus morality itself cannot 
justify its existence unless its final issue is beauty 
and love, as the flower is the consummation of 
the plant. Everything that is beautiful is true and 
moral, though everything that is true and moral 
is not beautiful. A beautiful building should be 
strong, but a strong building need not be beautiful. 
"To think is not to love, but to love is to think." 
Love is the sum of all. I may have been a re- 
spectable man — scholar, manufacturer, or idler at 
large ; I may have penned most polished verses 
or painted most academic pictures ; and so lived my 
life. But to be possessed by a noble sentiment, 
to extend my personality while apparently destroy- 
ing it, to please my neighbour and love him as 

1 [Man is a point that flies with two wings : one is thought ; the 
other, love.] 

23 



24 THE ART OF LIFE 

myself, to bestow my life on the outer world and 
from this outer world to extract a new life — here 
indeed is a novel state, this is true life ! 

True life ! — for among us there is infinitely 
more love than justice. We are strongly moved 
by passion alone. The brain looks down from his 
lordly sceptical height upon our internal sensa- 
tions, and, sorting them, takes note merely of the 
pains. Of what is going well he has never a word 
to say. On the other hand, a delicate and com- 
plicated apparatus is constantly receiving and 
transmitting to our nerve centres a host of ex- 
ternal sensations, often hardly perceptible ; it is 
perpetual hurry to and fro ; and all this movement 
from without acts upon us like an incessant wind- 
ing of a clock. 

There are thus two men in us : the inner man, 
who digests, and the outer man who breathes the 
air and perceives external things ; the analyst, and 
the compounder ; or, to use another figure, the 
conveyancer or surveyor who proves our title, 
and the master of the house, who throws up its 
windows and makes it his home. The analytical 
spirit is the essence of the scientific spirit, and the 
synthetic spirit the substance of the aesthetic spirit. 

Some people do not admit this duality, which 
it is so important to recognise, and on which the 
whole art of life is based. They say that the useful 



THE NECESSARY COMMUNISM 25 

becomes beautiful on ceasing to be useful ; that 
love of the beautiful is born of superfluity, and 
constitutes a luxury. One might as well say that 
it is a luxury for a plant to bloom. An out-and- 
out utilitarian would be a monster, and an out- 
and-out sentimentalist a fool. I heartily agree with 
Taine's dictum that each of us has two dispositions, 
the one self-centred, the other beneficent. 

According as the one or the other of these dis- 
positions is the more strongly marked, a man, a 
woman, a society even, assumes an aspect of at- 
traction or of repulsion. Sentiment, of course, 
may degenerate into abuse or weakness ; but the 
civilised man is recognised by the predominance 
of sentiment over pure reason. This is what 
Jules Simon and Gambetta implicitly proclaimed 
when, on their accession to power, they advocated 
a republic of the amiable or Athenian species, 
which meant practically that hard logic had had 
its day, and sentiment had come by its own. In 
point of fact, the Christian nations cannot be led 
in these days without love. There is no more futile 
notion than that of an automatic government, a 
perfectly adjusted constitution, regulated like a 
cotton-mill. Man must have some craze or other : 
the good government is not the most talented, nor 
even the best, but that to which we are well dis- 
posed, and which makes us happy. Hence states- 



26 THE ART OF LIFE 

men like Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Balfour, Leo XIII, 
have always maintained the necessity, amid the 
' struggle for life,' of mixing the leaven of the 
ideal with our daily bread, which otherwise we 
should be unable to swallow. 

So true is this that each of us does, in fact, im- 
port something of the ideal into his life, in his own 
fashion, at the cost of occasional blunders. The 
masses are doing so when they get drunk. Some 
of us fuddle our minds, in a large variety of 
ways. In one of his novels, M. Estaunie brings 
upon the scene an unfortunate tutor, dismissed 
without notice by the mother of a young dunder- 
head because his lessons, which certainly are 
labour lost, cost ten shillings apiece ; as he meekly 
shuts the door behind him, the tutor is aware that 
the lady, without lifting an eyebrow, is paying five 
guineas for a false coiffure, which certainly has 
its uses. Thereupon he revolts and falls foul of 
society. Why ? He has only himself to blame. 
Why does not he turn hairdresser, since 'tis an 
excellent trade, and, after all, conduces to the 
ideal as well as another ? But no, the gentleman 
has an ideal of his own ; and so have all of us. As 
Goethe says: " There is no subject but has its 
poetry." Leibnitz has well celebrated the beauty 
of geometry, Aristotle the beauty of mathematics. 1 

1 Ricardo. 



THE NECESSARY COMMUNISM 27 

Pure science, in truth, may itself become an object 
of love to some rare minds of high distinction ; but 
the majority of men, left to themselves, will fall in 
love with what they chance upon by the way. One 
of the most honourable of Parisian bankers lately 
told me, with no little pride, that he had succeeded 
in inspiring such belief in his finesse that, the 
moment he advised the sale of a security, his 
clients immediately bought. I am pretty sure 
that our friends the burglars and assassins must 
appreciate, in their several arts, a neat haul, a fine 
murder. 

So it is with our society : it must have a passion 
of some sort — hatred of the English, love for gold- 
mines ; but it does not always choose wisely. 

A thirsty man is well disposed to the brewer ; 
but if the waiter, instead of bringing him drink, 
said to him, " Excuse me, sir, while I explain how 
they grow the hops or prime the beer," he would 
exclaim, " Oh, come now, I am thirsty ; that's no 
business of mine ! " 

There is, then, a genuine art, which consists in 
presenting us with beautiful things perfect and 
complete, worthy of our love ; because we need 
them, but have neither the time nor the taste to 
seek or choose them ourselves. A society in which 
the religion of beauty does not exist is foredoomed 
to anarchy ; every man goes his own gait ; it is as 



28 THE ART OF LIFE 

though you were to amass unsigned bank-notes, or 
to leave ripe fruits to moulder. Whatever Tolstoy 
may say, not everything is beautiful or worthy of 
love ; and the supreme, the culminating art, the 
art of showing forth beauty and prophesying love, 
is in every sense the art of an elect few ; it is the 
gift by which men recognise what may be truly 
called an aristocracy. 

" Au-dessus de la haine immense, quelqu'un aime." x 

" The greatest of these is Charity." 

To institute, high above our self-seeking society, 
a government based on love, gentleness, benignity — 
distilling calmness, justice, and union, the refresh- 
ing dew of courtesy and grace — this is the great 
work to undertake. 

Self-interest, intelligence, analysis, keep men and 
things apart. Keats humorously said that he owed 
Newton a grudge for destroying the poetry of the 
rainbow by reducing it to the prismatic colours. 2 
Society is cemented by love. Self-interest demands 
tyranny ; love invokes liberty, for no tie is stronger 
than a common love ; and, instead of pitting in- 
dividual dissimilarities against one another, or 

i Victor Hugo. [Above the immense hatred, some one is loving.] 

2 See Mr. W. H. Mallock's remarkable book, "Is Life Worth Living?" 

[But the humour was Charles Lamb's : see the account in Haydon's 

diary (quoted in Canon Ainger's Life) of the meeting in his study, at 

which Lamb proposed Newton's health "and confusion to mathematics."] 



THE NECESSARY COMMUNISM 29 

endeavouring to suppress them, or teaching us to 
shut our eyes to them, love imbues them with the 
consciousness of completing each other. As in 
society, so in the individual, whether regarded as a 
moral or a physical being, beauty represents the 
synthesis of life. The beautiful man is the man of 
perfect vitality. 1 

A society is beautiful if, instead of anarchy in 
tastes and ideas, it establishes a unity of sympathy 
and affection — if it adds to its capacity for repres- 
sion the capacity to love. 

Science creates individual property, necessary in 
regard to material things, which cannot be dis- 
tributed without being taken from one person to 



1 M. Jules Lemaitre enforced this truth in admirable words at a 
meeting held in Paris by the 'CEuvre des Faubourgs' [a sort of 
Oxford House] : " Your faith has this social advantage over others, 
that it puts you on the same level with those to whom you extend a 
helping hand, and that your piety spontaneously establishes between 
the poor and yourselves that equality of which we hear so much, but 
which does not exist in nature, and is practically non-existent in law, 
though attempts have been made to introduce it into the latter. 

" I have said that a second fruit of your religious belief is a perfect 
tolerance. While our municipal philanthropy refuses its assistance to 
little children of the poor whose parents have not consulted them on 
the choice of a school, you succour the needy without inquiring what 
is their religion, or even whether they so much as have one. 

"You know too well the preciousness of immortal souls not to 
respect their freedom. Your religious faith implies belief in free will, 
and consequently the conviction that no action is valid if it be not free. 
You know that every religious act performed without sincerity, in- 
duced by self-interest or fear, degrades the doer of it ; and it is your 
wish and purpose to elevate your needy friends," 



30 THE ART OF LIFE 

give to another, and without being diminished them- 
selves. But the soul grows larger by participation ; 
the more widely it distributes itself, the more strength 
and amplitude it acquires ; the gift of the soul in- 
fringes no rights, but the reverse. And therefore, 
love raising us above ourselves, beauty tends to 
create the necessary communism, the communism 
of souls. 



CHAPTER THE SEVENTH 

THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 

" La haine en moi va germer ; 
Dois-je rire ou blasphemer? 
Et l'echo m'a dit : Aimer. 

" Comme l'echo des grands bois 
Me conseilla de le faire, 
J'aime, je chante et je crois. 
...Et je suis heureux sur terre ! " * 

— Theodore Botrel. 

" Take away love, and you suppress all 
the passions. Establish love, and you bring 
them all to birth." — Bossuet. 

"'And yet am I still persuaded,' said 
Parlamente, ' that man will never love God 
perfectly until he has perfectly loved some 
creature of His in this world.' " — The 
Heptameron. 

To ourselves, love brings redemption. Imagine 
a being who lacks nothing, spared the assaults of 
universal envy, ministered unto before ever he 
opens his lips : without love, all this is as nothing. 
What redeems us is the quickening sentiment by 

1 [Hatred is springing up in me : shall I laugh or blaspheme ? 
Echo answers — Love. Obedient to the counsel of the great woods' 
echo, I love, and sing, and believe, and am happy on earth.] 

3 1 



32 THE ART OF LIFE 

which we learn to love existence instead of resign- 
ing ourselves to it, and which, taking us out of 
ourselves, reconciles us with life universal — with 
the future life as with the past. 

People bent only on pleasure will never under- 
stand the worth of love ; but with those who are 
in quest of happiness the case is otherwise. 

It is an essential law of our nature that every 
sensation strikes a chord in us, creates an image, 
the image resolving itself into an idea, and the idea 
into an emotion. Our physical sensibility is, as 
it were, a network of telegraph wires : the in- 
tellect reads the telegram and forwards it to the 
moral sense, which is final arbiter and executive 
authority. 

Without dwelling on these primordial problems, 
we may remark, nevertheless, that our moral sensi- 
bility increases in direct proportion to our intel- 
lectual development, and almost inversely to our 
physical sensibility. It is a known fact, for instance, 
that the dumb animals are superior to us in the 
sense of smell, and that savages retain powers of 
which civilisation has robbed us ; though, to redress 
the balance, we have the control of steam and 
electricity, which more than compensate for our 
losses. Intelligence thus raises us to a higher sensi- 
bility, quick and delicate ; and, here, art consists 
in employing emotions of sense as little as possible, 



THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 33 

and relegating them to the background. Where 
the realists so grossly err is in reserving the word 
'real' for material sensations, whilst our thinking 
faculty, our moral consciousness, the realest things 
in the world, are constantly growing, elevating 
themselves, so to speak, by a sort of law, almost 
mechanical, and at all events inevitable. 1 Sensa- 
tion remains, of course, the starting-point, and the 
more active it is, the more rapidly is the aesthetic 
ascent effected. 2 But it has no other function. 

How is this mechanism to be explained ? How 
does a physical excitation come to produce this 
intellectual state which otherwise would not be 
produced ? We cannot tell. The relations be- 
tween spirit and matter are full of these enthralling 
mysteries. 

We live in the midst of a prodigality of life, 
among myriads of vital germs, sterile seeds, 
microbes, unseen forms of life. Likewise, innu- 
merable sensations, internal, external, claim our 
attention every moment ; very few really move us. 

A sensation that, so far as I am concerned, 
passes unnoticed, acts energetically upon my neigh- 
bour ; a shock that leaves me unmoved will make 
him happy or unhappy, give him sickness or 
health. Joys and griefs float innumerable about 
us. How many germs of joy settle upon us with- 

1 Ricardo. 2 Ribot. 

C 



34 THE ART OF LIFE 

out our knowledge, inhaled by us, assimilated 
to our life, in utter unconsciousness ! 

In this respect it may be said that beauty is 
relative ; it exists for us only so far as we are able 
to apprehend it. And each of us discovers his 
own love, — a love which does not, which cannot, 
touch his neighbour. Thus the art of life is 
essentially individual and personal ; it has general 
rules ; but each of us must mould and shape it 
in his own way. 

The art of life, then, is the art of drinking for 
ourselves at the inexhaustible fount of beauty. 
You hear music : a pedant will tell you it is the 
same for everybody, since it is merely molecules in 
vibration, air- waves impinging on the nerves. This 
has no interest for you. What you perceive in 
the music, what alone exists for you, is the one 
thing that science fails to catch : its sentiment. 
By means of a sort of spiritual chemistry you 
extract from the physical phenomenon its very 
essence — a delicious fragrance of suggestion, an 
image to which your heart responds. Communion 
with the ideal is thus no phantasy : it is simply a 
matter of extracting from the lower realities a 
reality purer and more enduring. The moment 
we turn our backs on science, to yield ourselves 
to an impression of art, we enter this higher realm. 
Our progress in it may be little or much ; our 



THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 35 

sensibility may be enhanced by training or re- 
stricted by fatigue ; but the field of action is 
unlimited. Let us look at things, then, with eyes 
of love, and we shall at once, on all sides, spell 
out sublimities. This truth drew from Hugues de 
Saint-Victor, a school-man of the Middle Age, this 
cry of rapture : " O my soul, what gifts hast thou 
received from thy spouse ! Look upon this world : 
all Nature fulnlleth her course, to minister to 
thy needs. Heaven serveth thee : Earth sustaineth 
thee." It was this same enthusiasm, when they 
saw mortal things irradiated by a love from on 
high, that inspired great dilettanti of life like St. 
Francis of Assisi ; it was this which, with mathe- 
matical certainty, caused Pascal to say : " The 
infinite distance between body and spirit typifies 
the more infinite distance between the spirit and 
charity " : in other words, if it is impossible to 
understand how a physical sensation transforms 
itself into an intellectual act, still more impossible 
is it to understand how an intellectual act can 
extend itself so far as to become an act of love. 

The conclusion is, that we must draw from life 
what it has to give : all things are vibrating, think- 
ing, speaking, singing around us. Let us go to 
beauty as we go to the South, as, long ago, 
the barbarians went to Rome. 

Deign to think of yourself, Madam ! How tire- 



36 THE ART OF LIFE 

some it would be to spend your life in the hands 
of your maid or your hairdresser ! 

Life spells activity ; either we master it, or it 
masters us. The general formula for our predomi- 
nance is expressed in the phrase : Do from a loving 
heart what you ought to do from a sense of duty. 
Cultivate your heart, feed its fires, nourish its 
energy ; do not abuse it, but allow it to speak to 
you ; if only you do not stifle it, it will show a fine 
capacity for loving. ." Love, and do it matters not 
what," said St. Augustine. Love is the law of life ; 
and St. Augustine goes so far as to maintain that 
every creature, even the beast of the field, loves God. 
All Nature, high and low, resounds with an im- 
mense, a deafening cry, a hymn uplifted to the 
God of love. " And God saw that it was good." 

The sweetness of life, said Wisdom of old, is the 
diffusion of oneself. The Master added : " A new 
commandment give I unto you, that ye love one 
another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
another. By this shall all men know that ye are 
my disciples." 

Ah ! a strange earth is ours, so thick embrambled 
with hatreds ! It thirsts for love, is mad for love ! 
Our first cry when we came into the world was a 
cry of pain, our second a cry of love. Say that 
word, and men tremble, women bend their ears ; 
all women understand and thrill. Deep in their 



THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 37 

hearts an echo whispers why they were made, 
what they are here to do. The affections traverse 
life like those soft breaths of Spring without which 
there would be no verdure, nor any flowers ; the 
voices of hatred scour the earth like the blighting 
winter blast. All activity reduces itself, in the long 
run, to a giving of oneself. An idea only exists 
in so far as it is expressed. Observe how, on the 
stage, at the bar, in the pulpit, mere ranters, men 
" who love to hear themselves speak," diffuse bore- 
dom around them. But there, as elsewhere, the 
man who forgets himself, who gives himself unre- 
servedly — he is the man who arouses enthusiasm, 
and to him the public are devoted. 

No progress whatever is realised apart from this 
rule. Those who love nothing, do nothing ; those 
who love amiss, commit foolishness. 

The supreme Artist, in fashioning us out of love 
and enthusiasm, and inviting us to find happiness, 
did not then deceive us ; to nurture one another on 
love is to perform a religious act, and this philo- 
sophic truth has been by no one so well expressed 
as by the author of the Imitatio Christi. 

Philosophers who look at the things of this life 
from a wholly practical standpoint — Epicurus, 
Bentham, and the rest — will of course dispute the 
utility of the affections. " Fancy ! " you may hear 
them say, " a commerce consisting in reckless 



38 THE ART OF LIFE 

giving away ! Better were it to amuse ourselves 
with blowing bubbles, like children !" And yet 
Epicurus has admirably shown the impossibility 
of dispensing with the affections. Then how does 
he explain them ? He sees in them a mere exten- 
sion of the ego : he understands a man loving a 
friend who is devoted enough to become his alter 
ego — a cat, a dog, an old coat, anything that he 
finds useful. 

There is, of course, some truth in his theory, 
with the all-important reservation that this ex- 
tension of ourselves is the effect, and not the end, 
of love. Affection has for its end the communica- 
tion of being ; and, looking for its original and 
supreme type, I find it in maternal love, because 
this love originates in the most perfect communica- 
tion of the self, and presents all the characteristics 
of deep and enduring sentiment ; it is the direct 
opposite of parasitism. 

Theoretically, a mother's love is somewhat hard 
to analyse. It includes a measure of instinct, since 
it exists among the lower animals ; only, unlike the 
other instincts, this does but grow and develop 
with the refinement of the spiritual nature. It 
complies in many respects with the utilitarian desi- 
deratum set forth by Epicurus ; it prolongs, so to 
speak, the mother in the child, and the child in the 
mother, because, in the first place, it establishes a 



THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 39 

moral solidarity between them, a reciprocity of 
devotion and service consorting with their ages ; 
and in the second place, because between mother 
and child there is a certain likeness, native and 
acquired, certain points of moral and physical 
resemblance from which springs a sort of highly 
specialised pride, akin to the vanity of the author 
and the sentiment of property. 

You do not choose your children ; the affection 
you have for them belongs to the category of the 
purely human affections, not depending on your 
will and pleasure, but obligatory, like the love of 
brother and sister ; it is cradled in the flesh. 
Maternal love thus has its roots in the earth, but 
it soars into the heavens. It is an affection based 
on reason, but at the same time a redeeming force, 
since it ripens into passion. And this arises from 
its nourishing itself on what is itself lovely, on what 
is the substance of passion, and on what produces 
the fine flower of the being — namely, the wonder- 
ful joy of self-devotion. 

The more completely a mother has given herself 
up to her child, the more she loves him. She loves 
him if he has caused her agony and peril, if she 
has devoted herself to him through the long period 
of suckling. She loves him for the fatigues that 
follow after, the anxieties, the fears, the sleepless 
nights he has caused her; and, after the long 



4 o THE ART OF LIFE 

procession of childhood's ailments and weaknesses 
has passed, when the child is growing up, she loves 
him still for the moral perturbations he brings upon 
her, for her share in his sorrows and toils, his hopes 
and fears, his disappointments and successes. She 
loves him so much that she would give her all for 
him, even her life. Here, indeed, are all the fea- 
tures of a redeeming love ! 

Such love is the communication, or rather the 
very transmission, of life. Some forceful women, 
young widows left without support of any kind, 
have devoted themselves to a son. Is there in the 
wide world a love more ardent ? Truly a beauty 
of existence, a ransom for wretchedness and woe, 
the dawn of a life exceeding high. And this love 
produces love ; devotion engenders devotion. 

So characteristic of love is this spirit of sacrifice 
that we find even peasant nurses, to whose care un- 
feeling mothers have confided their little children, 
becoming attached to their charges with a real, 
maternal, passion. Can instinct be alleged in 
explanation here ? No, for the real mothers, who 
have bestowed upon their children nothing of their 
heart's love, hold aloof from them. But the nurse 
is knit to the nursling by the cares she has taken, 
by her very devotion — a sort of glue to women. And 
this quasi-motherhood rises to the pitch of passion. 

In motherhood, then, there is an earthly element, 



THE REDEEMING SENTIMENT 41 

which is the obligatory side of affection, and a 
divine element, which is the spontaneous up-growth 
of devotion, with its marvellous fruits. 

Hence I cannot but reverence, as a dogma pro- 
foundly rooted in our humanity, the Catholic faith 
in a Virgin Mother. What a strange mystery at 
first sight — this absence of physical obligation, this 
quiet efflorescence of the pure, elect Motherhood ! 
And yet, where could be found anything more per- 
fectly beautiful ? And what more completely typi- 
fies the ideal role of woman ! 

The maternal sentiment is the necessary basis of 
the whole art of life. 



CHAPTER THE EIGHTH 

THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MEN 

" Imagine a chariot drawn by two horses, one 
black, the other white. The former is depressed 
to the earth whence he sprang ; the latter has 
wings, and dreams of sweeping the chariot to- 
wards the boundless heavens, whence he himself 
descended." — Plato. 

" All the labour of man is for his mouth, and 
yet his soul is not filled." — Eccles. vi. 7. 

Therefore I do not propose to seek in men the 
idea of redemption, since they can neither be 
mothers, nor even nurses. Theirs is a different 
mission. They were the first created : in their 
charge are the primitive and egoistic acts in which 
all life commences. Eating and drinking are 
among the primitive acts with which man is en- 
trusted : they are matters essentially egoistic ! 
You are nourished on the morsel you have in your 
own mouth ; your neighbour's mastication pro- 
duces no effect on you. 

The main incentive of men is the joy of power, 
the ambition which the eminent philosopher Alex- 
ander Bain so well calls a "malevolent sentiment" ; 



THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MEN 43 

the ambitious man is in very truth a man, unwill- 
ing to share, finding, on the contrary, his joy in 
making others suffer, or at least in lording it over 
others : those superior beings, men, as a clever 
woman recently defined them, are "monsters of 
selfishness ! " 

Selfishness produces, however, a crowd of other 
ravenous appetites, which might well be taken for 
passions : vanity, to wit, and pride, and wrath. 
These appetites are springs of action ; like passion 
itself, they have effects both physical and moral : 
thus (to take a simple case) we can waken quite 
easily at a fixed hour as the result of a mere effort 
of will. In this, unquestionably, there is a mas- 
tery of the individual self which at first blush 
delights many a man, and appears sufficient for his 
happiness. Yet it does not so suffice, the proof of 
which is the simple fact that egoism is useless save 
as a point of departure : every ambition comes 
almost instantaneously to drape itself in grand 
affectations of generosity. There is endless talk 
of benevolence, 'altruism.' Ministers of State, 
members of Parliament, talk of the good of the 
people ; the spirit of beneficence is the fount of 
all good. But, in reality, they imagine they will 
cure us of our hatreds by mingling us more closely 
together ; and, to evolve social or collective happi- 
ness out of an aggregation of individual woes, they 



44 THE ART OF LIFE 

propose in all sincerity to suppress the individual 
and turn us into mere wheels in the social machine ; 
as Victor Hugo said, they give machinery a soul, 
and rob man of his. And in support of their thesis 
they will tell you that Society is the all, that it 
precedes the individual, that it has created us, and 
that our very thoughts thus belong to the State. 
They will explain to you with admirable lucidity 
that the mustering of two millions of ourang- 
outangs would suffice to create Paris, since associa- 
tion will give them in the mass the qualities of 
which they are destitute individually. As if the 
inventions by whose aid we live were the work of 
' Society,' and not of the inventors ! 

In practice, this mingle-mangle of men has made 
us creatures of gloom, pessimists, nihilists : natural 
law, on the contrary, indicates that the value of 
every being lies in his individuality. A dog has 
more individuality than a hare. The mewling 
infant resembles, more or less, other infants ; but 
as he grows to manhood, his features gain defini- 
tion, his personality becomes distinct. 

It is useless to seek the secret of the art of life in 
the ability to crush the individual. In that case, 
our ideal would be a prison, which is not to be 
thought of. 

Individuality must be respected. The special 
quality for which a woman makes choice of a man 



THE INSUFFICIENCY OF MEN 45 

is the beauty and the moral force of his capacity 
for love ; and her love will always translate itself 
by the yearning to see this man become a true 
man, that is to say, steadfast, sincere, individual, 
because individuality is the specific character of 
men. But obviously, besides this spirit of pure 
individualism, another is necessary. For my part, 
I am profoundly grateful to the present age for 
having so clearly demonstrated the nauseousness 
inherent in certain political schemes and public 
'affairs/ It has given us a useful object lesson, and 
shown us how necessary it is to rate sensibility high 
above the sphere of virility. It is an excellent thing 
in women that their great ambition is happiness. 
How many among them would give all that they 
have, their rank, their fortune, for a moment's 
happiness ! This is a sentiment utterly opposed 
to the ambition of which we have spoken. 



CHAPTER THE NINTH 

THE TRUE GUIDE TOWARDS THE ART OF LIFE 

"God sent not His Son into the world to 
condemn the world, but that the world 
through Him might be saved." — St. John 
hi. 17. 

"One soweth, and another reapeth." — St. 
John iv. 37. 

" To be admired is nothing ; the thing is, to 
be loved." — Alfred de Musset. 

" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the 
earth." 

To inherit the earth is to love that which is, to 
catch the savour of things. A conqueror, a general, 
does not inherit the earth. 

Our fathers were, occasionally, mild and gentle 
creatures enhungered of meekness. Their rulers 
at times set themselves the problem of filling life 
with love, and this is how they made the attempt : 
first, by inculcating a chivalrous worship and service 
of woman, which inspired countless acts of bravery, 
and impelled the Renaissance to a magnificent 
intellectual development. Secondly, even in the 
material and practical order of things, they 

instituted a power resting wholly on love : the 

46 



THE TRUE GUIDE 47 

kingship. The king was neither a despot nor a 
master ; he was the heart of France, not her brain. l 
He represented God and the grace of God — in other 
words, life ; he reigned, but did not govern. And 
men loved him because to be loved was his 
function. It is difficult in these days to conceive 
the kind of worship paid in olden times to the king 
and the royal house ; we have become mere 
brain-pans, creatures of reason, with perhaps a 
glimmering perception, derived from the traditions 
still cherished in England, that unity may be sought 
for, the fatherland personified, and liberty estab- 
lished by means of a common affection in which 
divergences of interests and ideas disappear, thus 
obviating the institution of a mere constabular 
authority, which lumps all men together in one 
indistinguishable mass, like so many nuts in a bag. 

Kings we have no longer ; but women can fill 
their place, and there would be nothing extraor- 
dinary did they form actually a sort of league 
with the object of resuscitating among us the 
potency of love, the grace of God. 

Each of us has his own part to play in this world. 
For my part, I could no more tolerate effeminate 
men than warrior - priests, or yokel - magistrates, 
or fiddler-painters ; but I do think that woman 

1 See in particular the portraits of St. Louis and Louis XII by 
Fenelon {Dialogues des Moris), and also La Bruyere, Du souverain. 



48 THE ART OF LIFE 

completes man, and that the greater a man is, the 
more he needs completing on this wise. 

To me it is distressing to see women doing 
men's work, living a life away from home in the 
factory or the office. They have a high calling of 
their own — to be mothers ; and to this they can, 
and they ought, to join a host of complementary 
labours. But the royal part, the redeeming part — 
who will fulfil that in the home, if the woman 
forsakes it ? 

I am not speaking here of exceptional women ; 
I take an ordinary, average, woman, and I ask her 
simply to be something different from a man — no 
more, no less. 

Such a woman is formed by man : first, by educa- 
tion ; then, as transformed and perfected by her 
husband. Between the maiden and the mother an 
abyss yawns ! Further, I acknowledge, of course, 
that the man must have the anxiety and responsi- 
bility of their material interests. But does this 
mean that the wife has no mission to fulfil save to 
cut her husband's bread and butter ? Or is married 
life a Darby and Joan existence, an association, a 
sort of mutual insurance against the risks of mor- 
tality? 

We shall see by and by that the idea of progress 
is an essential factor of happiness. For this reason 
it is necessary to rely on love : intimate communion 



THE TRUE GUIDE 49 

of soul amplifies two persons, two lives ; it is the 
best means of self-growth, the most effectual agent 
of progress. It results that, herself formed by man, 
woman, in her turn, has for her mission the forming 
of men. So true is this, that an undertaking runs 
grave risk of failure if a woman is not its moving 
spirit, especially in the realm of high speculation or 
the spiritual life. St. Jerome, St. Francis of Sales, 
St. Francis of Assisi, and many another of the most 
venerable among men, would have stinted them- 
selves of light and life if they had rejected the moral 
support of a woman. 



CHAPTER THE TENTH 

VOICES DEAD AND LIVING 

" God giveth to a man that is good in His 
sight, wisdom and knowledge and joy." — 

ECCLESIASTES ii. 26. 

Reflections of an Eighteenth- Century Woman. 

11 Am I, then, in this world to pass my time in 
trivial cares, in tumults of feeling ? Surely, surely 
mine is a better destiny ! This admiration where- 
with I burn for whatsoever is beautiful and good, 
great and noble, teaches me that I am called 
to practise the same ; the sublime and ravishing 
duties of wife and mother will one day be mine ; 
and the years of my youth should be employed in 
making myself capable of fulfilling them. I must 
study their importance, and learn, in governing my 
own inspirations, how to guide in due time those 
of my children ; by the habit of self-command and 
the diligent furnishing of my mind must I win 
secure possession of the means of making happy 
the sweetest of societies, of steeping in felicity the 
man deserving of my heart, of reflecting upon all 
our surroundings the joy wherewith I shall flood 



VOICES DEAD AND LIVING 51 

him, and which will be, must be, altogether his 
work." 1 

From a Lady's Letter of Thirty Years Ago. 

" I was reading lately your eloquent plea in 
behalf of studious women. ... I venture to say 
that you yourself are not aware how just and true 
and profound are those ideas of yours, so clearly 
and tersely expressed — how they go to the heart of 
the burning questions of the day, and set some 
of us thrilling ! 

" No one but a woman who has suffered and 
is still suffering from the horrible spiritual tight- 
lacing with which we are crushed, can have a 
complete conception of those moral woes of which 
you have had merely a far-off intuition. . . . Neither 
one's household duties, nor the caresses of one's 
children, nor a husband's love, nor even at times 
prayer (often sadly imperfect) or good works (too 
rare), could quench that thirst of a soul yearning 
for something greater than itself, something to 
which it might rise by effort and toil. You have 
felt the futility and the danger of these strivings, 
which tend to crush out the fairest and noblest 
blossoms of the soul. You have perceived what 
dire ravages the river, thus diverted from its 
natural course, may cause as it bursts its banks. 

1 Madame Roland. 



52 THE ART OF LIFE 

... Is there no effectual remedy for these moral 
agonies ? " 1 

A Letter of Yesterday. 

" Sir, — I don't — really, I do not — despise my 
sex. I should think it stupid, not to say unseemly, 
to speak of the 'naughtiness' or the foolishness 
of women. But frankly, having read — to the very 
end — your big book on The Women of the Renais- 
sance in quest of its moral, I can't help thinking 
that you ask too much of us. 

" You want us to be perfect ! — to have all the 
virtues that men haven't — and that 's an appalling 
quantity ! And why in the world ? To amuse 
our lord and master ! 

" And you really think it would amuse him to 
have a learned, blue-stocking wife ? He would 
much rather she were pretty, and smart, and 
cheerful — a good fellow like himself, not squeam- 
ish about a risky story, perhaps ! But among 
friends 

"With your ideas of perfect women, you will 
have all the husbands down upon you : and what 
about the unmarried men ? Mine (my husband) 
was lately reading a volume of Max Nordau's, 
and he showed me this sentence: 'Safety lies in 

1 Quoted by Monsignor Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans (1802-1878). 
in his Lettres sur l' education des filles, p. 17. 






VOICES DEAD AND LIVING 53 

purity, continence, or the possession of a wife 
without individuality, without desires, without rights 
of any kind.' 

" Is this clear ? 

" Well now, while I am about it, I may as well 
make my confession. I am not in the least what 
Wagner would have called a man-eater. I am a 
respectable married woman — old-fashioned, if you 
like. But look honestly at how the matter stands : 
children, when you are willing to trouble about them. 
. . . First of all, you have to have them. Then comes 
the catechism and confirmation. ... To have a 
well-ordered house, personally to attend to the 
flowers and a hundred and one details — at homes, 
dinners, visits, begging expeditions, committee 
meetings, one's pet charity — all this is not art, 
perhaps — of course it is nothing of the kind. It 
is business. Ah me ! we are broken in to it. And 
then all the other things : dressing, theatre-going 
— and the doctor, for with this sort of thing you 
quickly want him. What man would have the 
strength to lead our life for long ? 

" These men of ours go to the club. Suggest 
their doing something else — liking what they don't 
like, and not liking what they do : Ah now ! there, 
indeed, is art ! 

"But how do you imagine we women can find 
time to do anything? What do you want us to 



54 THE ART OF LIFE 

read ? For myself, I read in the train, which 
opens my eyes to the fact that I read too much. 
My mother takes me to task for all these novels. . . . 
Then I have a girl of twelve : mustn't I think of 
her marriage ? And my son, what shall I do with 
him ? His father doesn't bother about him. Really, 
one has too much to do. What is the good of 
racking my brains to make men a little better ? 
Men are stronger than we. Do you fancy that 
if parsons and doctors were not men, I should 
have a tithe of my confidence in them ? 

"You have never found a woman making an 
original discovery. I go in for music, like the 
rest of us. Well, among all the women who have 
been strumming the piano since the beginning of 
the world, how many composers are there ? Men, 
always men ! It is a disagreeable, disheartening, 
melancholy, provoking fact, I admit ; but there 
it is, and will you be so good as to tell me how 
to alter it ? 

" P.S. — To convince you that I am the most 
staid and serious of women, here are some texts : 

" l Unto the woman He said, I will greatly 
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception : in sorrow 
thou shalt bring forth children ; and thy desire 
shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over 
thee ' {Genesis). 



VOICES DEAD AND LIVING 55 

"'The dominion of man over woman is the 
dominion of the spirit over the flesh ' (St. Augus- 
tine, City of God, Book xii). 

" ' A woman must either fear or greatly admire 
her doctor, otherwise she will not obey him ' {Dr. 
de Fleury)." 



CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH 

THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 

"Woman must build up life out of the 
materials furnished by man." — Anna Lem- 

PERIERE. 

" Matters of taste are women's province : 
hence they are judges of the perfection of 
the language." — Malebranche. 

" 'Tis not a vain thing, but the immutable 
truth to say that, as our ruin sprang from 
woman, so the source of our salvation must 
be born of woman." — St. Anselm (Cur 
Deus Homo, Book i). 

This then is the objection : women are good for 
nothing but to amuse men. In Africa, it appears, 
there are still to be found women purchasable at 
from five shillings to five pounds. With us the 
tariff is different, but that is all civilisation has 
done for us. 

Unhappily, women represent the one half of 
mankind, a fact which does not allow the total 
suppression of a plaything so burdensome ; and, 
taking another standpoint, history shows us of 
what use they may be. 

They are not taken seriously, and rightly so ; 

56 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 57 

but is it possible to take them seriously, and still 
be right ? That is the question. 

Men and times, as Pastor Charles Wagner has justly 
said, are judged according to the degree of respect 
in which they hold women. The epochs at which 
women are held in the highest esteem are epochs 
of civilisation, when the element of force seems to 
bend before justice, and even before gentleness. 
Women are prophets of the ideal, a fact of which 
we have had many striking examples since the day 
when that excellent barbarian Clovis submitted to 
the yoke of a woman more refined than himself. 
I do not try to explain this phenomenon ; I merely 
record it, and conclude from it, first, that women 
have a very large share of responsibility for our 
decadences ; and secondly, that many of the de- 
fects imputed to them are acquired defects, from 
which a better education and a firmer guidance 
might have saved them. 

What these defects are we know — want of 
stability, fickleness of mind, lack of moral fibre, 
Mightiness, inconstancy, weakness of will. These 
are facts ; moral strength, which should be their 
peculiar virtue, is often wanting in them ; many of 
the best of them are like ivy ; they warp the wall 
to which they cling, and if they cannot, or think 
they cannot, find something on which to fasten, 
they fall and are lost. But is feebleness of soul 



58 THE ART OF LIFE 

never to be met with among men ? What else can 
be developed among women, seeing the education 
we give them ? The world sets itself to reduce 
women to one type, to rob them of all individuality 
of character ; too often it does its utmost to turn 
them into geese, or else rebels, though fortunately 
many of them escape both fates. 

They are bred for the marriage market, if I may 
use the phrase ; little animals trained to be obedient 
and to look pretty. Prettiness ! — in sooth, they 
are only saved from nonentity by their looks, their 
coquetry, or the guineas of their parents ; their 
personal worth never, or hardly ever, enters into 
consideration. And yet we are amazed at the 
appearance of frivolous women, putty in our 
hands, now all trustfulness, now all hopelessness, 
but always ' good fellows/ who have never had a 
thought save for hooking a husband, and are 
incapable of anything except submission to the 
' inevitable man ' good enough to study them in 
detail — their doctor, their corsetier, or their some- 
thing else. They take all and give nothing. They 
form relations rather than ties, and contacts rather 
than friendships. They do not even dress 
for themselves ; their mission is to propagate 
the fashion. They live on a finely appointed stage : 
the lights often dazzle them, but never help them to 
clear-sightedness. Sometimes they make no little 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 59 

racket ; but the most cursory observer sees that they 
are playing the comedy of a Mr. So-and-So. And 
they get a name for flightiness. . . . Do I exaggerate ? 

Of course there are foolish women (as there are 
foolish men). But, to speak frankly, many have, 
or might have, intelligence, and a marvellous sensi- 
bility, and gifts of the highest order. Only, even 
when they have breadth of mind, the ideas we give 
them are narrow. 

They think it their duty to dwarf their souls, 
just as they have been induced to believe in the 
necessity of tight-lacing, at the cost of pain, and 
even of health, for the sake of a captivating slim- 
ness. They fancy they are pleasing us by making 
themselves willow-waisted morally. I do not say 
that, with men equally slender, their reasoning is 
wholly false ; but it seems to me that the spirit 
of sacrifice is pushed rather far, not to say ill 
understood, when you compress your intelli- 
gence to the cracking point, and reduce your 
sensibility to a thread, with the excuse that your 
husband doesn't care for such things, or that the 
dear man, returning from office, club, or golf, to 
dine and not to talk or rack his brains or be bored, 
is anxious not to find a wife who will make him 
feel small, or with whom, at any rate, he will have 
to mind his p's and q's. I £io not shut my eyes, 
of course, to the moral suffocation which many 



60 THE ART OF LIFE 

. women suffer ; but I see, too, that many of them, 
unhappily, have not the ghost of a suspicion of it 
themselves. You would greatly astonish them, and 
get into' their bad books besides, were you to tell 
them that the species of spiritual asthma of which 
they complain, and the unstable, nervous, restless 
condition of which we complain, are due to nothing 
in the world but their own habit of burying them- 
selves alive. Having more time than we men to 
spend at home, if they care so to do, and endowed 
with a quicker sensibility, they naturally have 
greater need of harbouring ideas. Here we find 
the secret of their unhappiness. Observe, I do not 
say of creating ideas, but of conceiving them, 
refining them, with love, and devotion, and a sort 
of maternal generosity. Thus, when we invite 
them to possess themselves at a given moment of 
our ideas, and to cherish them to fruition, we do 
them the immeasurable service of indicating how 
they may attain true womanhood, and how their 
moral and even their physical life might expand 
and blossom ; we beseech them to open their 
hearts to that which sustains and blesses life — to 
make themselves beautiful, for there is no true 
beauty but that which beams from the soul. Did 
they but hee.d us, life would uplift instead of crush- 
ing them, because they would descry above its 
trials a definite and admirable goal — because this 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 61 

moral maternity, subject to no physical exhaustion, 
untouched by fatigue or feebleness, would truly 
satisfy their craving for a higher sustenance. 

"Oh, there are in my soul faculties stifled and 
useless, too many qualities lying undeveloped, 
availing nothing to myself or others ! " Such was 
the cry of a woman. 1 How many large hearts and 
choice spirits have thus sunk beneath the weight of 
idle prejudices, unappreciated, sterile ! 

It is not right thus to slay souls, to condemn them 
to feebleness — in other words, to evil. 

We call it a trifling matter, a necessary evil after 
all, because otherwise a man would not be master 
in his own house, and because, in particular, if our 
wives became blue stockings, they would lose all 
taste for the indispensable and eminently hum- 
drum tasks of housekeeping. 

Does this question really arise ? The physical 
health of women is invariably a reflex of their 
moral sufferings. And what should we men say if 
our moral sufferings or our ailments were pooh- 
poohed ? 

However, no one desires to create pedantic or 
ill-bred women. Do men prefer dull, empty-headed 
creatures, women whom, you may be sure, no idea 
will ever disturb ? Such women read the penny 
novelettes and love the music-halls, which disgust 

1 Quoted by Monsignor Dupanloup. 



62 THE ART OF LIFE 

and excite them at the same time. Is this the type 
sought for ? Or would you prefer a useless goose 
of a woman, inanely religious ? Women, like men, 
require moral supports ; and they are no more able 
than we to find support in foolishness or abnormal 
ingenuousness. A woman will be a pedant, not if 
she is educated, but if she is ill brought up. And 
it is certainly to our interest that the souls of our 
wives should follow a natural bent. 

We say : " What does my wife do ? She reads, 
immerses herself in deep ideas, cultivates literature, 
art, philosophy. And what is the good of it ? " 
What does she do ? — she gives herself the means of 
enduring us ! That is something to be thankful 
for ; and even were we perfect, no creature of any 
dignity could remain entirely satisfied with the 
material sides of life, and become a mere child- 
bearing machine. This is the baser side of mar- 
riage, the side which tires. 

A certain highly ingenious organisation, LHos- 
pitalite du Travail, is doing something for the 
moral health of the poor by providing them 
with honest work. Just in the same way does a 
woman assure her moral health. To this end she 
need not neglect her duties as wife and mother. 
She will merely steep her hands in beauty, and 
knead all things to that luminous glow. From all 
things she may cause a ray of life to spring — 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 63 

in her walks, in her glances, in paying her visits, 

even in buying boots for her children. All things 

throw back a reflection of art and enthusiasm, if 

we will but see it. 

• •••••• 

The function of women, that which it is their 
first duty to develop, is goodness of heart. 
Though they lack decision of character and vigour 
of intellect, it behoves them to possess a higher 
strength, the strength that lies in simple kindliness. 
This is the innate yearning for self-sacrifice, uttered 
in the cry of Rachel, " Give me children, or else I 
die." " Happiness," writes a poetess — 

" C'est l'humble fleur qui croit sous chacun de nos pas 
Et que nos dedaignons, que nous ne voyons pas. 
Les etres doux et purs aiment les simples choses, 
lis vont faisant le bien, semant partout des roses." 1 

How many of them adore in spirit that pleasing 
mystic vision which sees Paradise as a place where 
the material bonds of the family drop off, but where 
love lives on, all-filling, all-satisfying ! 

So, talk as we may, a woman is not to grow into 
a man ; her real part is to lift man into likeness 
with herself. Nothing avails like the sweet spirit 
of womanliness to sift out our opinions — to guide 

1 Madame Monfils-Chesneau : — ['Tis the humble flower that springs 
at our footsteps, despised by us, unseen by us. The gentle and pure 
love simple things, and go about doing good, sowing roses every- 
where.] 



64 THE ART OF LIFE 

our thinking into peaceful channels, to filter and 
clarify it, to sterilise it, in Pasteur's sense of the 
word. 

What excellent confessors and physicians women 
might be, if they would ! In whom could one find 
more unction, more skilful and light hands to lay 
bare one's wounds ? And how gentle in their mini- 
strations ! How excellent in winning little by little 
a man's full confidence, — that trustfulness so neces- 
sary for drawing souls together, and without which 
life is but as empty air ! One might devour all 
Plato or all Schopenhauer without finding in them 
a tithe of the practical philosophy that may inhabit 
a woman's little brain. Their emotions will guide 
their reason, and they are infinitely superior to us 
in that they are able to console, simply because 
they excel us in knowing how to suffer. They 
show a smiling countenance though crushed with 
anxieties ; they appear radiant though sunk deep in 
a dark and quaggy rut, butterflies though things of 
clay, strong though feeble, modest though gripped 
by the harshest realities, beautiful though sick, 
youthful though old and tired in soul. All of them, 
young or old, cold or passionate, dairymaids or 
duchesses — all alike, unless a life of artificiality 
has crushed them too completely, recognise and 
comprehend the tones of affection, sweet beyond 
compare. From the pebble by the wayside to the 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 65 

clouds of heaven, all things, to them, float in a 
radiance of sunlight and heroism. They live in a 
golden glowing atmosphere, breathing the dust of 
men. 

People have greatly erred in setting up compari- 
sons between men and women, and adjudging the 
latter inferior because they eschew the things men 
claim as highly intellectual, such as politics. But 
we are bound to recognise that in matters of art 
and emotion they have consummate accomplish- 
ments. Flowers will spring up beneath their feet ; 
but not flowers alone, as Fenelon, Fleury, Dupan- 
loup, and many others have already said ; we have 
only to hand on the tradition : the education of 
women must base itself, above all, on the develop- 
ment of conscience and sensibility, and conse- 
quently on the idea of liberty. 

There are still some other objections to be 
noted. 

By developing the sensibility of women, some 
one will say, are you not developing an element 
of weakness ? Are they not already only too 
impressionable ? Some of them are never two 
minutes the same in appearance, sentiments, or 
ideas. When you meet them, you are never sure 
what you are going to find. Nothing is constant 
but their inconstancy. They laugh with one eye, 



66 THE ART OF LIFE 

and weep with the other. If you venture to utter 
to-day the opinion they were defending yesterday, 
they eye you mistrustfully ; the idea has a suspi- 
cious appearance, coming from you. They lose 
patience easily, as all men know ; and their tem- 
pers too : all animation about a trifle, helpless in 
important matters. Is this a tendency to en- 
courage ? 

It is easy to reply that these weaknesses are due 
wholly to our failure to educate their sensibility. 
Children also are creatures of caprice ! But even 
the severest critic of women will admit, I think, 
that, under their apparent instability, they possess 
a capacity for constancy of sentiment far greater 
than ours. They never forget. In their hearts lie 
affections wonderfully durable and wonderfully 
deep. Innumerable women show a courage in 
which we are lamentably deficient — the courage to 
sacrifice their lives with quiet determination, not 
for the purpose of destroying other lives, but to 
build them up : the heroism of hypocrisy ! A noble 
army, this ! 

Some one will object still further that to cultivate 
her impressions is all very well for a rich woman, 
whose time is her own, but an impossibility for a 
woman with serious duties to perform. What a 
mistake ! It is only busy women who have time to 
spare: idle women never have a moment. Besides, 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 67 

good taste is not to be bought from a show-case at 
Whiteley's ; a woman accustomed to work, medi- 
tation, a simple life, lays a better foundation than 
a rich or indolent woman. 

There remains finally the notorious fact that 
women have been clearly proved incapable of 
original performance : they have made no famous 
discoveries. This objection seems to me of little 
or no account, since, in my view, pure science is 
not women's sphere, while on the other hand 
their general and synthetic art, limited to universal 
insight, 1 is excellently adapted to soften the bruta- 
lised victims of life's mechanical round. After all, 
however, good management is a sort of science, 
and it must be admitted that in this respect women's 
work, though done in silence, is of the highest 
order, a point in which De Tocqueville is at one 
with Caesar. The science of controlling a house- 
hold and being the life and soul of its members is 
as valuable as another ; and, perchance, many a 
legislator would not much care to see his household 
managed as he manages the ship of State. 

Finally, we must form a clear idea of the precise 
duty of women, which is to develop their natural 

1 [In the original, " des clartes de tout : " a quotation from Moliere's 
Les Femmes Savantes, act i., scene hi., where Clitandre says that 
he is quite agreeable to women having des clartes de tout, but cannot 
abear a woman who loves learning for learning's sake.] 



68 THE ART OF LIFE 

gifts, and boldly to adopt the virtues in which men 
are lacking. 

They are the instrument of life, one might almost 
say the magic cauldron of life. They set all its 
elements in fermentation. To transform and to 
impart is their whole concern. Scarcely have they 
opened their eyes upon the world but they must 
needs have a doll to cherish, and tend, and fondle. 
And they continue thus, engendering, cherishing, 
tending, fondling, unless life warps their nature. 
11 Their machinery," as Rousseau said, " is admir- 
able for assuaging or exciting the passions." Theirs 
is a treasure that grows richer in the spending. 
Even from a physiological point of view, they 
exhibit a marvellous potentiality of endurance, and 
sympathy, and productiveness. They are not armed 
for attack ; the finest natured are the strongest ; 
their chords ring wonderfully to all appeals of 
sentiment ; they love money with resignation, but 
glory intoxicates them ; swift views, sudden im- 
pulses, are their breath of life ; their enthusiasm 
is contagious, and they shed around them the youth 
and freshness of life. So, without intention or 
effort, they are constantly bestowing their very 
selves ; they clothe all things with their own en- 
thusiasm. Science they vindicate by the noble 
fruits they obtain from it ; from thorns they cause 
roses to spring forth, and these roses in their turn 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 69 

they cultivate, giving them an added beauty and 
fragrance, and fresh blossoms all the seasons round. 
Excellent gardeners of the world! Their role no 
doubt has varied with the circumstances and needs 
of different times, but the crying necessities of the 
present time serve only to accentuate it and bring 
it into higher relief. The ignorance and weakness 
of women work more real mischief than the ignor- 
ance and weakness of men. The passive virtues 
no longer avail for governing ; active virtues are 
the need of to-day. 

In olden days, the king belonged to all men, 
and represented something indispensable to every 
society, a person with no private interests, but 
wholly devoted to the interest of the public. He 
had no property of his own, not even a park, not 
even his palace. Now, daring as the idea may 
appear, let us say that women also can only reign 
on condition of communising their souls. Other- 
wise they will lose all influence, even with their 
sons. A woman comes short of essential duties 
if she is content with bemoaning the evils of the 
times and playing patroness to good little school- 
boys, instead of learning for herself, and revealing 
to others, what the evils of the times really are, 
of drawing out the manhood slumbering within us, 
and giving it new graces. She bears the burden 
of human joy. And a woman of intelligence 



jo THE ART OF LIFE 

and leisure has, in this particular, duties more 
complicated than she who milks the cows or who 
minds the poultry. 

She must think and love by her own energy, 
instead of bearing in her heart a thousand abortive 
sentiments. Her husband and her friends hunt, 
speculate, work, make havoc of their lives. Even 
so : she has no right to do the same. If, having 
the power, she does not redeem men, surely it is 
she who ruins them ? 

No difficulty will discourage her if she first fully 
realises that she possesses all that is needful for 
success, and then sets her responsibilities before 
her in a clear light. 

She will sometimes make mistakes ; enthusiasm 
itself, the delicious art of giving things charm, has 
its perils, carrying one away into the unreal, open- 
ing a loophole for illusion, day-dreams, prejudices, 
fictions. What matters it, so long as the tree is 
vigorous ! Would you fell a superb poplar because 
you noticed on it some sprigs of mistletoe ? 

It may be also that a woman will go astray in 
point of vanity. That is a pretty common folly 
(even among men), and very provoking when it 
is shown in questions of etiquette or dress. But 
why should we not agree that there is a noble, 
an excellent form of vanity, which consists in 
having perfect knowledge of the things one can 



THE WHOLE DUTY OF WOMEN 71 

love, rejoicing in the apostleship one exercises, 
and, to attain success therein, cultivating diligence, 
refinement, attentiveness, industry, persuasiveness ? 
Where is the harm ? 

But we need not dwell on these fears. The 
special goal of a woman's life, that in which it is 
distinguished from the life of a man, is manifest : it 
is the great things, the things to be loved, the 
things which do not 'pay.' Man serves money. 
You make it your servant, ladies, and you must 
aim higher, at the things that, are not bought and 
sold ; attachments, real friendships — these are your 
speculations. Be faithful to them. In faithfulness 
is redemption. 

A moment ! As I bow to you, I fancy that I 
see on my wall, in place of a modern paper, a 
grand fresco of long ago, an exquisite symbol of 
your reign : the Angel from Heaven, kneeling in 
humble adoration before the spotless Motherhood, 
proclaiming that from your devotion shall proceed 
the welfare of mankind. The scene is simple and 
sweet, the colour serene : a closed room, a curtain 
hanging, barely a glimpse of the sky. 



PART THE SECOND 
THE MIDDLE LIFE 



CHAPTER THE FIRST 

CREATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT 

" Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth ; and 
let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy 
youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, 
and in the sight of thine eyes." — Eccle- 
siastes xi. 9. 

The art of life, we have seen, lies in the right 
ordering of the emotions, and the duty of exer- 
cising it falls to women. 

Now, in practice, the regulation of the emotions 
implies : first, the ability to reach them ; secondly, 
the ability to direct them towards an end to be 
defined. 

A woman acts upon the sensibility of men, indi- 
rectly by means of certain implements, namely, the 
things or the ideas among which they move — in 
other words, the atmosphere or environment — or 
directly, by her own personality. 

Let us sketch rapidly these different methods. 

Man is in general rather indolent than stupid. 
We did not ask for life ; we live because we were 

born, and live upon the earth, and on the things 

75 



76 THE ART OF LIFE 

of the earth, because we are driven thereto by 
necessity. We shall die when God pleases, and go 
whithersoever divine justice and mercy appoint. 
We are subjects of impressions, rather than seekers 
after them. 

Thus it happens that our environment seizes upon 
us by means of our senses and perceptions, and so 
far penetrates us as to modify our nature to a sur- 
prising degree. We are the creatures of the air 
we breathe, and of the objects by which we are 
surrounded. 

No one can escape this influence, which Taine 
indeed considered as the almost unconditional law 
of our development. Presently, in proportion as 
this influence works upon us, a new condition 
arises — that of suggestion. Our sensibility grows, 
our individual force of resistance diminishes, until 
we succumb to an overmastering influence, special 
or general. And it is a singular thing that such 
possession is contagious ; at certain moments we 
see a whole nation at the mercy of a fixed idea, or 
whole orders of men controlled by one and the 
same afflation. 

This is a class of phenomena about which it is 
indispensable that women, for their own sakes, 
should have very clear notions. 

Such notions are the basis of their art. 

Dr. A. R. Wallace, and many other writers after 



CREATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT 77 

him, have pointed out the singular harmony sub- 
sisting between living beings and the conditions of 
their life. The rabbit is a simple and a well-known 
case in point : left to run wild, it assumes a dusky 
drab colour, which renders it indistinguishable 
from dead leaves and bracken ; domesticated, it 
becomes white, black, piebald. 

Physically, we are subject to a like influence, 
and still more morally. Sights, scents, sounds, all 
act upon us and tend to modify us. 

It is a palpable fact that light is an element of 
cheerfulness, because it has a slightly stimulating 
effect on the brain — because, in other words, it is 
tonic. 1 The light-heartedness of the street boy 
of Naples is different in kind from that of the 
London arab. 2 

Further, our whole mechanism is marvellously 
of a piece ; it is in the true sense a unity. M. Fere 
has proved conclusively that the ear hears better if 
the eye is simultaneously affected by a pleasant 
sensation, or the nose is conscious of a grateful 
odour ; in short, if, while our attention is occupied 
with one sense in particular, we engage the partici- 
pation of all the others. 3 

1 M. de Fleury. 

2 It has been remarked also that suicides are most common at times 
of great heat or great cold. 

3 Two English students of the part played in aesthetic perception by 
the motor element, Miss Violet Paget (Vernon Lee) and Miss C. 



78 THE ART OF LIFE 

Nature's art is identical : it envelops us com- 
pletely. No wall-paper displays more numerous 
or more varied colours ; no orchestra has more 
tones. And we make for ourselves gardens, we 
love to live among flowers or animals : they act 
upon us. 

Translate these rules into the moral life, and 
you will find them the same. Long ago it was 
said : A man is known by the company he keeps. 
There is a sort of social aesthetics, purely external, 
which saves one from many a fall, and goes hand 
in hand with the noblest sentiments. 

Take a man from the plough, deck him in a 
soldier's tunic, enroll him in a company, set him 
marching to the band : you have made a new 
man of him ; all that remains is to speak to him 
of his country and his king. A man whose heart 
is seared and empty wanders aimlessly into a 
church ; a simple touching hymn, the dim re- 
ligious light of the sanctuary, among half-veiled 
arches and mysterious carvings, will penetrate 
him with a strange, an unaccustomed feeling. 
In politics also the environment is not without 
its aesthetic influence. A fine atmosphere of 
beauty has clung around parliamentary liberty 

Anstruther Thomson, showed in the Contemporary Review of October 
and November 1897 that the whole physical organisation is concerned 
in the ocsthetic emotions. 



CREATION OF THE ENVIRONMENT 79 

from days gone by. The Speaker of the House 
of Commons, as we know, is accustomed to call 
his colleagues individually "the honourable mem- 
ber for so-and-so/' and only utters the personal 
name when calling them to order ; as though the 
man himself had then emerged by some mistake. 
One day a member who had been dining ventured 
to reply to Mr. Speaker's gentle warning, and 
asked what would happen in case he resisted. 
" God only knows ! " replied the Speaker dryly, 
quickly raising a finger. Take this as an example 
of the spell of the environment. 

This pervading atmosphere of art has certainly 
a capital importance. As in physical nature, so 
in the moral nature, there is a temperature favour- 
able to growth. Yet we must not imagine that 
our moral transformations come about easily and 
without opposition. Some men exert a positive 
resistance against the influence of their environ- 
ment ; and what ought to quicken, slays them: 
Louis XVI, for instance, in a humble walk in life 
would have been the most excellent of men, and 
as locksmith would never have mounted the scaf- 
fold. Others, on the contrary, will bring a dis- 
turbing element into the most peaceful of societies. 
Incorrigible utilitarians will turn art into a mere 
instrument of perversion. 

Thus the creation of the environment demands 



80 THE ART OF LIFE 

much delicacy and skill. The general prin- 
ciples never vary ; but it is very necessary to 
know how to employ them, for in practice 
it is a question of coaxing, charming, con- 
vincing. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND 

NATURE 

" The spring sun is beautiful, and his light 
is sweet ! The birdling, the insect, the plant, 
all Nature has again found life, is steeped 
in it, revels in it ; yet I sigh because this 
life has not come to me, and no sun has 
risen upon men's souls, which remain in 
cold and gloom. While waves of light and 
warmth are flooding that other world, mine 
remains ice-bound in darkness. Winter 
enwraps it with his rime, as with an eternal 
shroud. Weep on, weep on, ye who have 
no Spring ! " — LAMENNAIS. 

In opening the campaign, an external impression, 
vivid, unhackneyed, is profitable. A rural en- 
vironment is good for people who are used to 
town. 

Every one, with barely an exception, is fond 
of the country ; but our fondness takes very 
diverse forms. Artists love its sunlight and air, 
its fair colours, its freedom and activity ; practical 
people like it for the physical occupations they 
associate with it, hunting, fishing, or the like. 

Men's souls, like rivers, are fed for the most 
part from mountain heights. The monks showed 
a sound knowledge of life when they chose for 



82 THE ART OF LIFE 

the seat of their well-ordered existence of labour 
and prayer, in boundless converse with Nature's 
simplicity, a hill-top, or the bank of a stream, or 
at least the deep recesses of a wood. To us also 
a lake or pond, the sea, the forest, speak the primal 
language. 

Here am I in a flat sequestered region. Do 
you know this singular belt of country called 
the Forest of Orleans ? Perhaps not, for happily 
the lovers of solitude and silence have not yet 
discovered it. Long, broad, unfrequented roads 
stretch away indefinitely through the green cloister 
of the woods, highways for our waking dreams. 
Above, a grey sky ; in the far distance, a bluish 
haze. Not a sound save the whistling of the wind. 
The very animals hide from view. Here and 
there, a broad, melancholy pond. Everywhere, an 
atmosphere of sober, honest thought. My peace- 
ful dwelling among its immemorial avenues might 
pass for a convent. From my study, like my 
friend Montaigne, I look out upon water and 
sky, tall poplars, and woods, woods unending, 
in winter drinking the mists, in summer clashing 
in the tempest and challenging the thunder. Man 
here is active and unspoilt, a woodman or a 
thinker ; the necessity of clearing his way is 
brought continually home to him ; life is elemental 
in its simplicity ; what could softness avail him, 



NATURE 83 

between the brambles and the sky ? Thought 
also becomes of equal temper with the oaks : you 
hold converse with an ancient oak, which, as in 
Tennyson's lyric, talks with you of ages past ; you 
lend your ear to his inarticulate accents, and gather 
a meaning from his immobile gestures. Dante 
holds that the veins of certain trees flow with the 
blood of men whom, for their violence, divine 
justice has thus imprisoned, as Daphne of old 
was changed into a laurel. Blest silence ! blest 
solitude ! What refreshment, what renewed vigour 
does man find in this resolved personal inter- 
course with steadfast nature, within two hours 
of Paris ! 

Our northern regions thus impress us with a 
sense of vigour and intimacy ; more, they have 
the art of not divulging all their secret, of veiling 
all things in a shimmering haze. They are to us, 
as it were, a vast theatre or a spacious hall, giving 
us respite from wall-paper vegetation and hot- 
water pipes ; and, strange to say, the sky is nearer 
to us than our ceiling — 

" Tout dit, dans l'lnfini, quelque chose a. quelqu'un ! 
. . . Tout est plein d'ame." x 

Though it is held, fairly enough, that our love 
for Nature dates from the eighteenth century, the 

1 Victor Hugo. [In the Infinite, everything says something to 
some one ; all is full of soul.] 



84 THE ART OF LIFE 

northern peoples have loved Nature always. Long 
ago the old Flemish masters introduced landscapes 
into their portraits, and bouquets into their in- 
teriors, or strewed pinks and roses over the pages 
of missals. 

Women, who are such artists in these matters, 
and are so much affected by the joyous sunshine, 
the tranquil flow of streams, the immutable silence 
of the woods, might well attune us to Nature's 
diapason, and, by gently leading us back into close 
converse with her, loosen the toils of our civilisation. 

The southern sky has other resources. Nothing 
misty, nothing blurred there ; all is joy and bright- 
ness and affirmation, a believing instead of a scep- 
tical clime. The Greeks of old called themselves 
'children,' and in truth the Greek revelled in exis- 
tence with the joy of a child happy to be alive. 
To him old age itself wore a smile, and as his 
physical wants were very few, all the things of 
Nature seemed to him in pleasant and delightful 
harmony. He sported with Nature, and his fancy 
peopled her with the genii of the woods. 1 

1 "The Italians are the most impious of men : they make light of 
the true religion, and rally us Christians because we believe all that 
the Scripture contains. ... A phrase they utter in going to church is, 
1 Let us go and conform to the popular error.' ' If we were obliged,' they 
say again, ' to believe implicitly the word of God, we should be of all 
men most miserable, and could never enjoy a moment's pleasure. Let 
us conform for decency's sake, and not believe everything.' . . . The 
Italians are either epicureans or slaves to superstition. The masses 



NATURE 85 

How great an artist, too, was St. Francis of 
Assisi ! He never said within himself that he was 
accomplishing a work of art, but to him, in his 
simple, unchecked transports of enthusiasm, all 
things were love. He could have discerned in a 
stone, as with Rontgen's rays, a spark of life. 
" Fire and hail, snow and vapours, praise ye the 
Lord," said the Psalmist. And St. Francis also 
poured out his whole heart in song, with his 
sisters the flowers and the animals his brothers ; 
every page of his life speaks of his relations with 
the lambs and the birds. He discoursed to the 
swallows that flocked to him at his call, interpreted 
to them the beauty of their life, and drew solace 
from their pipings and the beating of their wings. 

One day, crossing the Venetian lagoons with 
one of his brethren, he passed by a bush vocal 
with song. He said to his companion : " Lo, the 
birds our brothers sing praise to their Creator ; 
let us therefore draw near, and blend our praise 
with theirs, singing the holy office of the Church." 1 

And thus indeed he did, chaunting in antiphon 
with the birds, from time to time beseeching them 

fear St. Anthony or St. Sebastian more than Christ, because of the 
plagues they send. . . . Thus they live in the depths of superstition, 
not knowing the word of God, believing neither in the resurrection of 
the body nor in everlasting life, and fearing naught but the pains of 
this life " (Luther). 

1 Little Flowers of St. Francis, cap. xii. 



86 THE ART OF LIFE 

to hold silence while he should uplift his strain. 
And he discoursed to them, and blessed them, 
and bade them go joyously and glorify God in 
the pure regions of the air. And himself was 
happy : " I perceive 'tis Heaven's will we remain 
here for a space, since our brethren the birds 
seem to find so great comfort in beholding us." l 

After forty nights of sleeplessness St. Francis 
fell into a trance, and bidding one of his brethren 
take a pen, burst forth into a marvellous canticle 
to the Sun, a hymn of human joy closing with 
an eulogy of Death ; for to him Death itself, 
serene and radiant, becomes Life ! Exquisite 
song of triumph, the jubilate of this poor tattered 
wight, this pilgrim of love : " Blessed be God my 
Lord for all His creatures, and blessed above all 
for our lord and brother the Sun, giver of the 
day's light. Beautiful is he, and he gloweth with 
wondrous splendour, ever bearing witness of Thee, 
O my God ! Blessed be Thou, O Lord, for the 
Moon our sister, and the Stars ; praise to Thee 
for my brother the Wind, for the Air and the 
Clouds." And thus he continues the litany of 
universal love. 

What need of further examples ? — St. Antony of 
Padua, out of conceit with men, pausing on the 
shore of the blue Adriatic and talking to the 

1 St. Bonaventure, Life of St. Francis. 



NATURE 87 

fishes ; or Jacopone da Todi, chaunting through 
the grating from the depth of his dungeon, " All 
that the wide world containeth urgeth me to love. 
Beasts of the field, birds of the air, fish of the 
sea, all creatures sing before my love." x 

The good people of France are, as a rule, less 
lyrical, yet they have never flagged in praise of 
the fields. George Sand, an ardent lover of the 
country, tells us indeed that sometimes she felt 
her soul as it were dissolved in her surroundings ; 
she imagined herself running, leaping, soaring, so 
passionately did she participate in the general life. 
Even at Paris you will see loiterers, fascinated by 
the sight of the Seine flowing beneath a bridge, 
contemplating it with unregarding eyes ; or im- 
pressionable people gazing into the sky while their 
thoughts are far away, occupied with quotations 
on 'Change, mayhap, and yet susceptible to the 
nameless charm. 

In the sunny countries, woman represents, 
even in the town, the centre of the decorative 
scheme, the soul of Nature, the thing of living 
beauty. Sensualists and mystics, slaves and free, 
all live out of doors on the public square : woman 
seems to spring up like a flower between the flag- 
stones, in all her charm and brilliance. 

It is not mine to say whether the French in 

1 Ozanam, Poetcs franciscains. 



88 THE ART OF LIFE 

general, and Parisians in particular, belong to the 
North or to the South ; but I fancy that they are, 
as a rule, more prone to look at a woman herself 
than at what surrounds her. If so it be, then 
nature produces on them just the impression they 
desire. 



CHAPTER THE THIRD 

THE ART OF THINGS 

Art has for its aim the perfecting, the heightening, 
of our sensibility to physical objects. Contact with 
the true and the useful being often void of charm, 
whether because the beautiful passes 'out of 
range/ as hunters say, or because the ugly presses 
upon us somewhat too closely, the art of life con- 
sists in creating for oneself a nest, a little sanctuary, 
an environment that one can love, and in presenting 
by their softer sides the things with which contact 
is inevitable. 

Likewise, a woman's art consists in drawing from 
the most modest occupations a ray of beauty and 
of love ; and the surest means of discovering this 
ray in them is to put it there. 

One gross error of our time is an aesthetic error. 
The belief is current that there are some things 
which are essentially artistic, which make you an 
artist from head to heel as soon as you touch them, 
and other things which can never be artistic. 
People rush to the first, and eschew the others. 
They fancy themselves to be artists by the mere 



90 THE ART OF LIFE 

fact of their handling a chisel or a brush instead of 
a plough ; a governess, be she ever such a goose, 
thinks herself a superior person. In reality there 
are some things to which art is applied, and other 
things to which it is not applied. The art of life 
consists in living steadily, without perturbations ; in 
doing honestly that for which we were born, and in 
doing it with love. 

I cannot forget, for example, the singular im- 
pression produced upon me, in a corner of the 
old hospital of Bruges, where Memlinc worked, by 
a group of beguines scraping carrots and murmur- 
ing their prayers the while. I was leaving the place 
with a band of tourists, my eyes filled with beauty, 
my heart haunted by the exquisite visions of Mem- 
linc : these placid women, not one of whom raised 
her head at so commonplace an event as a stranger 
passing, wholly absorbed, as they were, in blending 
the love of God with the fulfilment of His laws, 
well reflected the sentiment of the painter, the 
living ray of grace. I seemed to see around them a 
glamour of art. 

Take a woman who, from an entirely different 
point of view, showed the same instinct for finding 
loveliness in common things — the celebrated 
Madame Roland : " The drying of her grapes and 
plums, the garnering of her nuts and apples, the 
due preparation of her dried pears, her broods of 



THE ART OF THINGS 91 

hens, her litters of rabbits, her frothing lye, the 
mending of her linen, the ranging of her napery in 
its lofty presses — all these were objects of her 
personal, unstinted, unremitting care, and gave her 
pleasure. She was present at the village merry- 
makings, and took her place among the dancers on 
the green. The country people for miles around 
sought her aid for sick friends whom the doctor had 
given up. She ranged the fields on foot and horse- 
back to collect simples, to enrich her herbarium, 
to complete her collections, and would pause in 
delight before tufts of violets bordering the hedge- 
rows aglow with the first buds of spring, or 
before the ruddy vine-clusters tremulous in the 
autumn breeze : for her, everything in meadow and 
wood had voices ; to her, all things smiled." 1 

When a woman has equipped herself with this 
special force of beauty, she has done much. It 
only remains for her to nourish and propagate it ; 
her life is a permanent work of art ; around her an 
atmosphere is naturally created, in which all things 
solicit and give play to our noblest sentiments. 
Ah ! this art is no chimera, no vain or useless 
thing ; it is the very nursery of life. Even in a 
cottage it smiles upon the wayfarer, presenting 
flowers to his view, teaching him the graciousness 
and the necessity of joy. M. Guyau defines the 

1 O. Greard. 



92 THE ART OF LIFE 

artist as "he who, simple even in his profundity, 
preserves in the gaze of the world a certain fresh- 
ness of heart, and (so to say) a perpetual novelty of 
sensation." That is the impression which a woman 
should produce around her, and no tremendous 
exertion is needed, since the first rule is frankness 
and simplicity. Luxury tends to be hurtful. It is 
useless to go far afield, to search out recondite styles, 
to complicate, to love the affected, the rare, the 
eccentric, the languid. Let the house be a living 
and well-ordered place, where the accessory does 
not take precedence of the essential, where 
every object has its own place and its specific 
character. Breathe into all things a sentiment of 
unity, and also, as far as possible, of spaciousness 
and comfort. 

In the country, respect the ancient dwelling, even 
though a little dilapidated — the old walls, the old 
furniture, the old avenue, the old church. Try to 
feel in presence of a living personality. A house is 
a book in stone, and, if you will, you may give to 
everything a soul, even to stones. Allow your own 
life freely to enter and pervade this old foundation. 
Irregularities in structure, recent additions, are all 
voices of existence. Something of your own soul 
thus cleaves to all these walls. Is it not true that 
the architect of a building, the painter of a fresco, 
the carver of an arabesque, have left upon their 



THE ART OF THINGS 93 

work some fragments of their souls ? Their 
thought hovers like an exhalation about the walls. 
The voice of a singer causes the composer's soul to 
live again in us ; the painter, the sculptor, speak to 
us, serve us as mentors. I also, in the pages of this 
little book, shall leave some fragments of my soul, 
with the hope that in the shadow of my thought 
some one, perchance, may pray and love. 

The simplicity of a house inspires the visitor 
with a feeling of restfulness, and, if I may venture 
to say so, of simplicity of heart, exceedingly pleasant 
and profitable. The perfection of art is to escape 
notice. A room which does not smack of the 
upholsterer, which is redolent of life, exhales a 
peculiar charm. We feel grateful to it for its partial 
response to our secret needs, our constant yearning 
towards an unattainable ideal, our longing for a 
real grasp of the blessed life. No hard and fast rule 
obtains here, except that, while a woman may im- 
press us by the magnificence of her dwelling, she 
can only touch our spirits by the discreet art of 
making us partakers of her own spiritual life. 

Nothing is so distressing as furniture with pre- 
tentious and laboured outlines, draperies with ill- 
matched colours, diffuse hangings that are poor 
substitutes for the shade of tree or cloud. It be- 
hoves us to give the whole a convincing character 
of simple, natural, development, and by an artistic 



94 THE ART OF LIFE 

sense of arrangement to secure that what is meant 
to attract the visitor shall attract him instantly. 

The whole atmosphere should be one of " noble 
pleasure/' as John Stuart Mill said — of serenity and 
permanence, all things suggesting the presence of 
a strong and fervent soul, which imparts some- 
thing of its glow to surrounding objects, and invites 
other, kindred, souls to itself. 

The trinkets and gimcrack ornaments of the 
drawing - room cabinet betoken restlessness of 
mind. Even when tinsel, glitter, and vulgar luxury 
are absent, a false note is struck by over-decora- 
tion. Existence is such a complicated business 
nowadays, that without a large fortune we cannot 
permit ourselves to live and die after our own 
devices. Sooner or later we envy the lot of women 
who possess but one dress, for these, at any rate, 
as M. Charles Wagner says, " never ask where- 
withal shall we be clothed." I am inclined to 
agree with the English, who like elbow-room in a 
palace in spite of masterpieces of art, and prefer 
a somewhat unkempt greensward, so it be spacious 
and seemly, to the trumpery little garden squares 
and diminutive close-cropped lawns roofed with 
glass, encumbered with pasteboard groves and toy 
landscapes, which have so sadly ruined our taste 
and the health of our children. 

The general scheme of colour has immense 



THE ART OF THINGS 95 

importance in a room. What is colour ? We do 
not know. Has it a real existence ? We cannot 
tell. But these questions are of no importance ; 
colour exists for us, and that is enough. Sensa- 
tions of colour are produced, it appears, by light 
waves of various rapidity ; they affect and influence 
us in the same manner as sensations of sound, and 
almost as imperceptibly as our food. 

It has been proved that the mere proximity of 
a vivid colour is sufficient to produce a certain 
muscular excitement, analogous to the irritation 
resulting from a piercing sound. The fancy, so 
popular during the Renaissance, that the several 
colours favoured the development of particular 
feelings, has become, through the labours of Fere, 
Wundt, and others, a scientific fact. 

Thus the choice of colours for our rooms de- 
mands the greatest care. Red, without affecting 
men as it affects bulls, stimulates them to energetic 
action, or at least to movement, to such an extent 
that in Germany red has been employed in certain 
factories as a fillip to activity ! 

Bright red might well be largely used, toned 
down with dark blue ; blue has a tranquillising 
and strengthening effect. Green suggests peace- 
fulness, and white hints at frailty ; while yellow 
is impossible to almost every one, and is not 
exhilarating. Bright yellow and carmine, how- 



96 THE ART OF LIFE 

ever, colours much in vogue during the French 
Renaissance, and to-day the colours of the flag 
of Spain, produce a very pleasing effect in com- 
bination. 

Nothing could be more abhorrent to the eye 
than the majority of wall-papers. You gaze on 
these nameless abominations, and then fancy you 
can pursue your ideal, order your life aright ! And 
you are amazed that there are so many paltry 
ideals, so many insignificant lives! "The paper 
of the room in which we live has a silent but 
irresistible influence upon us; when we awake, 
it plays upon our will, dulled by sleep and ener- 
vated by our dreams. It operates upon us again 
when, in hours of sickness, we are condemned to 
remain with our gaze rivetted upon the foliage, or 
flowers, or persons represented on the walls, and 
when imagination is inactive from sheer lassitude." 1 
It gains a speedy hold on visitors also, fascinates 
them by the implacable geometrical severity they 
discern beneath the apparently capricious medley 
of flower and ornament. Our imagination may be 
said often to lick the walls, seeking for nourish- 
ment thereon. 

If you wish to create an idealistic atmosphere 
in your home, make your ceilings a principal feat- 
ure. Dispense with whitewash or cloudy tints, 

1 M. Andre Hallays, Journal des Debats, June i, 1900. 



THE ART OF THINGS 97 

and construct your ceiling of stout beams, heavily 
moulded, inscribed with maxims of high inspiration 
and solace, and coloured in strong tints of red, 
or blue, or green. Sacrifice the walls ; make them 
bright with mirrors, so that their disappearance may 
add to the size and the cheerfulness of the room. 
Window-frames stained in dark tones will form a 
substantial setting for the landscape, and bring 
you into direct communication with it. But if 
misfortune has placed you in a street where you 
have a disagreeable outlook, to which attention is 
better not attracted, have the windows lightly 
frosted, so that they too may cease to be. 

There is a certain lack of distinction in filling 
one's rooms with furniture solely for ease and 
comfort — sofas, long chairs, ottomans, settees. The 
big armchair of a bygone age, standing firm and 
capacious, was a thing of quite different stamp, 
dignified, even in the graceful Louis Quinze style. 
And as to certain freakish articles neither useful 
nor ornamental, incapable of responding even to 
the modest desire for something to sit upon — 
they, happily, have had their day. 

The whole effect should be one of dignity com- 
bined with homeliness. 

An amazing and preposterous fashion prevalent 
nowadays is to live with open doors. Whether 
this is due to an affectation of social importance, 



98 THE ART OF LIFE 

or merely to a wish to avoid suffocation by the 
heating apparatus, I cannot say. But can you 
imagine a more lamentable performance than to 
stand among one's servants in a sort of gilded 
market-hall, and receive a stream of visitors with 
whom, naturally, one can exchange only a word 
or two about the weather ? This is the express 
negation of all art. 

Nay, banish altogether that pitiful invention, the 
heating apparatus, or at least do not allow it to 
oust the fire on the hearth, with its genial, steady 
blaze, a joy to eyes and heart, indispensable as a 
lure for friends. And let the daylight, the glorious 
sunbeams, stream freely in at your windows, all 
generosity and joy. It will cost you, perhaps, the 
confession of a few wrinkles, but your heart will 
renew its youth. 

Rich or poor, do not crowd your walls ; set on 
them merely a living and friendly note, something 
that is a final revelation of your self, an element of 
life — a dainty water-colour, a fine engraving. Is 
not this a thousand times better than a vulgar 
glitter, or even than tapestries ? It is you, your 
thought, that you should stamp on these walls ! 
Thereby you extend and strengthen your personal 
influence. What recks it me whether I find this or 
that object in your drawing-room ? Am I stepping 
into a photographer's studio, or into a museum ? 



THE ART OF THINGS 99 

It is you that I want to see. And, to tell the truth, 
I do not think it very delightful to see above your 
head your own portrait, the portraits of your hus- 
band and children. The end of portraiture is to 
replace the absent ; besides, the painter or engraver 
strikes me too forcibly as interposing between you 
and me, and as indicating, almost brutally, how I 
am to understand you. What would happen, I 
wonder, if I should admire the imitation more than 
the original ? 

I would rather divine you, come to know you, 
in my own fashion, as the secret unity among your 
belongings grows upon me. If the visitor on 
entering perceives no discordant element ; if his 
eye, wandering presently towards the chimney- 
piece or some other salient point, rests on a beau- 
tiful head enhaloed, as it were, with Christian 
sentiment and ideals, or on a beautiful Greek 
statue, calm, dignified, in no wise laboured or 
strained, natural in pose and expression : at once 
he is at ease, his confidence is already gained. 

Presently his glance will range afield ; he will 
perceive some fine early Italian master, adorable 
in its artlessness, crowded with ardent ideas, and 
fragrant with noble aspirations ; or, if you are 
touched with the unrest of life, if needs you must 
plumb the mysterious and the unknown, you will 
have found room for some Vincian vision j or 

L'ofC. 



ioo THE ART OF LIFE 

perhaps for the clever and superficial gaieties of 
the French school, or the admirable warmth and 
spirit of some of our landscape painters. 

Many people indulge a taste for small canvases, 
because these will hang anywhere, go with any- 
thing, form part of the furniture, and suggest no 
manner of problem — cowsheds, to wit, scoured 
miraculously clean, interiors all spick and span, 
kettles athrob, alive ; or watery meadow-lands, 
with grey trees and grey water, and clouds fretted, 
or far stretched out, or close-packed, or flocculent. 
These do not tire the brain ; they offend no one, 
except that, from the house-decorator's point of 
view, they are often of too superior a workmanship. 

Rembrandt is the divinity of shade, the antipodes 
of the Italian sunny expansiveness. In an impene- 
trable cloud he dints a spot of gold, which proves 
to be a drunkard, a beggar, a melancholy wight, a 
rotund Boniface, a needy soul, a Jew from Amster- 
dam or Batignolles, or possibly himself. 

There are also the Gargantuesque old Flemish 
masters, with their phenomenal processions, their 
carousals, free to all, reeking with jollity and 
life. 

It seems to me that in matters of art one should 
say raca to nothing ; every aesthetic impression has 
some use. And I really do not see the utility of a 
discussion, like that which has been wrangled over 



THE ART OF THINGS 101 

for ages, about the relative importance of form and 
substance. Certainly there are features that are 
accidental, and others that are essential : you will 
choose according to your taste. The arts of design 
have no title to govern your soul ; it is your part 
to govern and make use of them. Do you prefer 
to invoke an image, or a thought ? Do you wish 
to surround yourself with the brutalities of so- 
called Truth, or with suggestions, forms which 
efface themselves in the interests of impressions 
or ideas ? Do you love beauty of form, exact 
outlines, well-defined contours, or a broad effect, 
a surface whose lines are lost in the ambient shade ? 
These are questions for yourself to answer. Good 
tools are those which suit you best. It is not the 
mission of painter or sculptor to reproduce a scene 
with mathematical precision : a photographer would 
do this better ; the artist's part is to be of service 
to you, to furnish you with the elements of the art 
of life. Indeed, it is the distinguishing mark of the 
artist that he singles out and segregates, in a crowd, 
in a landscape, the one choice object : upon this 
he fastens, he is alive to all its manifold nuances, 
and the charm is so great that around this object 
he sees nought but gloom. 

The aesthetic object does you the delightful ser- 
vice of supplementing your own visions, and of 
compassing you about with ideas. You do not 



102 THE ART OF LIFE 

inquire what it is, but what it expresses ; the 
cleverest of still-life pictures, like those to be seen 
in Italian houses, would give you but a very super- 
ficial pleasure. You need support, not illusions ; 
this marble, as no one knows better than yourself, 
is marble ; but it speaks to you. 

Only, the message of art needs to be properly 
directed. To catch its accents, or to make them 
heard, one must impart to it something of one's 
own. How wonderfully the meaning of things, 
even their most precise intellectual meaning, varies 
for us, day by day, through distraction or a change 
of mood ! If our mind wanders as we read a 
book, the loveliest thoughts slip past us as though 
over marble. A lady who had been stirred to 
enthusiasm by a somewhat mediocre book wrote 
asking me to recommend another which would 
produce the same effect. I told her first to fill 
herself with the same enthusiasm, and then to take 
down from her shelves any book she pleased. One 
day, subdued to our mechanism, we pass on like 
blind men ; the next, if our hearts are touched and 
our spirits satisfied, we feel suggestion to the full, 
and go so far as to see, in a phrase or a picture, 
ideas which the author never dreamed of putting 
there. 

Let us not, then, be anxious to crowd our rooms 
with beautiful things ; far better display things few 



THE ART OF THINGS 103 

in number but high in worth, adapted to their 
surroundings, and performing in some sort the 
office of the conductor of an orchestra. 

To enforce this reflection, it is enough to men- 
tion the irritating effect produced by certain 
museums. The genus t collection ' — that is the 
rock to shun ! All these hapless canvases, torn 
from their luminous, hallowed, intimate, unique 
spot, are there exhibited high and dry in learned 
desolation, rootless, forlorn. At ten o'clock you 
have to don the freshness of spirit necessary to 
enjoy them, and doff it on the stroke of four or 
five, according to the season. Instead of entering 
a gallery with heart at rest, and seeing in the sanc- 
tuary the object of worship, you pull it to pieces, 
criticise it with the pedantry of an office-clerk, and 
puzzle out a needless meaning. Some dear good 
souls discuss the subject, others its treatment and 
technique ; and the keepers stroll about or doze 
in a corner. What a crime to despoil streets and 
palaces and churches, the very tombs, for the sake 
of ranging such labels in a row ! This is art as 
officialdom knows it. 

In a room of great simplicity, a single work, 
adapted to its surroundings, and excellently inter- 
preting a woman's tastes, renders us a wholly 
different service. This is no corpse to anatomise. 
You contemplate an object of love, and all things 



io 4 THE ART OF LIFE 

glow with a new lustre ; you forget, if only for a 
moment, the offences of life. And I maintain that 
the poorest woman in the world, if she has faith 
in beauty, will always be able thus to fill her home 
with light ; she can always place in it some flowers 
or a photograph. 



CHAPTER THE FOURTH 

THE ART OF IDEAS 

You may furnish your rooms in a higher sort by 
adorning your chairs with beings who speak and 
act. In referring to these familiar objects as 
furniture, I mean no offence, but simply imply that 
they are not friends of yours, Madam, but merely 
accessories, persons who sink their own ideas and 
tastes to assist your art with theirs. 

In this category, musicians probably hold the 
first place. Indeed, music plays a much higher 
part in aestheticism than the manual arts, a part 
scarcely inferior to that of the intellectual arts. 
Like the latter, it has (so to say) no substance, 
appealing solely to the feelings ; whether we will 
or no, it rarely fails to take possession of us, though 
merely by tangled sensations ; it catches us as in 
a web, and does with us what it will ; it moves us, 
lulls us to sleep, stimulates us. It derives its effects 
from the relations of tone, whether with neighbour- 
ing tones on the scale, or with the singer and the 
listener. A small thing in itself, it is yet of capital 
importance : all life, all motion even, produces 



106 THE ART OF LIFE 

sound, from the wind and the sea upwards ; and 
recourse has ever been had to sound for the pur- 
pose of touching men. 

Beggars and the blind have always sung, as they 
do to this day ; song has ever been employed to 
console the afflicted, to hearten soldiers on the 
march, even to soothe physical pain. 

With very good reason, then, do women regard 
music as their own peculiar sphere. Thus, at the 
epoch of the Renaissance, in the heyday of their 
influence, they adopted musical attributes in their 
portraits ; these were, so to speak, their sceptres. 

Does it beseem a woman to aim higher, and to 
seek to create around her a real atmosphere of 
philosophy, history, science, poetry — in short, an 
intellectual atmosphere ? Yes, and no. If she 
is so reliant on her own wit and ascendency as 
to make all the personages she gathers but garni- 
ture for her soul or faithful radiators of her glory, 
mere apostles of her influence, yes. But no, if 
she has any fear of being absorbed by her sur- 
roundings, and reduced to the level of a land- 
lady. 

It is often said that salons are things of the past, 
and the fact is lamented ; in truth there are no 
salons now, and there never will be again, because, 
what with the ambitions and pretensions of men, 
the necessities of their careers, the obligations of the 



THE ART OF IDEAS 107 

struggle for life, the present age knows little of the 
artistic delight of allowing itself to be embodied 
or summed up in a woman. A drawing-room 
very soon becomes a sort of exchange for literary 
or sporting affairs, or the like. This does not imply 
that women should neglect to avail themselves of 
artistic or intellectual resources for their own 
personal behoof ; but it will certainly be recog- 
nised that a real courage is needed if they are to 
rise superior to tittle-tattle, the slang of market or 
stable, the stuff they read, the things they hear. 
Happy are the societies where one can still enjoy 
life, and think ! Happy the man who makes art 
unawares ! 1 

Yet, without ruling salons, women may still ex- 
ercise in intellectual matters a guiding influence 
truly indispensable. Instead of allowing them- 
selves to fall a prey to puffery, claptrap, or 
scandal, why should, they not, on the contrary, 
treat as personal enemies the men who only use 
their undoubted talents to wanton with them, to 
flaunt everywhere their nudities and show off the 
slaves of their lust ? — why smile upon pinchbeck 
rufflers, geniuses of Montmartre and the Latin 
Quarter ? It is self-constituted slavery to bow in- 

1 [In the original, " qui fait de la prose sans Usavoir" a reminiscence 
of Monsieur Jourdain in Moliere's Le Bourgeois Gentilko??ime, act ii. 
scene 4 : " 77 y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose sans que fen 
susse rien."~] 



108 THE ART OF LIFE 

cessantly at the feet of fashion. Always the fashion ! 
A play is bad : don't go to see it, and tell people 
so. A poem is a medley of unintelligible catch- 
words, a rigmarole of sonorous nothings ; have the 
courage, to say that it defies comprehension, and 
that your mind loves lucidity ! We all need our 
courage : this is yours. Nobody wants you to 
shoulder a rifle : you are asked to read or not to 
read, to see or not to see. If need be, effect a 
grand spring-cleaning ! You alone can destroy the 
literature of the music-hall and the casino, the 
trashy novelettes that ravage the meanest hamlets 
worse than alcohol. Is this courage beyond your 
strength ? Do you fancy yourself compelled, in a 
fit of democratic fervour, to fuddle yourself on the 
vile rinsings retailed a few steps away from your 
respectable dwelling ? Why then do you nourish 
your spirit on things that no one would dare to 
retail in the open air ? Nobody would suggest that 
you should pass your life in preaching ; a light or 
even a fatuous remark is not likely to offend. But 
for pity's sake insist that people wash their hands 
before entering your doors. Many a great per- 
sonage whom you invite to dinner and make much 
of, would be wearing a livery and displaying his 
calves in your entrance-hall if he had remained 
an honest man. Dare to face and to exult in 
things that are true and serious. Diffuse their 



THE ART OF IDEAS 109 

fragrance around you. You are responsible for 
the books that strew your table. 

What a power you would have at command if 
you acted resolutely in the interests of beauty ! 
The whole world would lay down its arms at your 
feet. The sentiment of the Beautiful is so strong ! 
" To fathom the dreams of poets is the true philo- 
sophy/' said a philosopher. 1 "The mind of the 
savant lingers upon phenomena ; the soul of the 
poet essays a higher flight, his inward vision pierces 
to the heart of reality. If the final knowledge is 
that which attains, not the surface, but the foun- 
dations of being, the poet's method is the true 
one." 

Wherefore, surround yourself at any rate with 
men who have the taste for rendering life musi- 
cal ; in your conversations encourage clear, clean, 
warm images, refinements of sentiment rather than 
tricks of style ; spread abroad an air of sincerity, 
cheerfulness, polish, and, above all, reverence. 
Your door is not that of a church, but neither is 
it that of a market. 

Some women are too subservient to men of dis- 
tinction, or so reputed ; they imagine them upon 
a higher plane than they really are, and especially 
more difficult to influence. The majority of 
men, foolish or eminent, obscure or famous, reck 

1 M. Izoulet. 2 M. Souriau. 



no THE ART OF LIFE 

little of grand sentiments, and are satisfied with a 
modicum of illusion or suggestion ; they are led 
by means quite infantile, provided they are carried 
out of themselves. 

Have you sometimes pondered our extraordinary 
faculty for self-detachment, whenever we actively 
employ our imagination — if we are reading a 
novel, for instance ? We delight in being duped ; 
we want to see and hear everything, we fancy 
ourselves assisting at scenes where the novelist 
himself declares no one was present. Thus, as 
has been said by a very clever writer, 1 we identify 
ourselves so thoroughly with the adventures of 
Pierre Loti, that on the day when M. Julien Viaud, 
naval officer, was received into the bosom of the 
Academy, the whole assembly, though so fastidi- 
ously select, thought they were really beholding 
Monsieur Loti. 

The art of the novelist consists in riveting our 
attention on the scenes he depicts. M. Loti, for 
instance, to whom I have just referred, has admir- 
ably painted the sea, but he has not sought to 
exalt it to a level with us ; he has lent to it neither 
ideas nor will, sadness nor ecstasies ; but he has 
marvellously felt, and caused us to feel, the solem- 
nity of its multitudinous and changeless life, its 
invincible weight, its aimless perturbation, and it 

1 M. Henry Michel, in Le Temps, April 9, 1892. 



THE ART OF IDEAS in 

is in this way that he has so powerfully im- 
pressed us. 

Well, your art is similar. You need not trouble 
about your merits or ours ; but solely about the 
effect you can produce on us, who love to be 
duped. Acknowledge this as a guiding principle ; 
for it is easier to regulate illusions than realities. 



CHAPTER THE FIFTH 

THE ART OF SELF 

"Let thy garments be always white; and 
let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully 
with the wife whom thou lovest all the days 
of the life of thy vanity, which He hath given 
thee under the sun ... for there is no 
work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, 
in the grave whither thou gocst." — Eccle- 
siastes, ix. 8-10. 

To put the matter in a nutshell, woman is the 
heart of the home. Apart from her it is lifeless 
machinery ; she alone keeps it going. 

The aesthetic object, then, to which it behoves us 
to devote our special care, is woman. 

I do not propose to furnish you, Madam, with 
toilet specifics, or to set up an unequal rivalry with 
your tailor or corset-maker. And yet the art of 
personal charm is so much inwrought with high 
philosophy, that you will forgive me, perhaps, for 
tapping gently at the door of your inner chamber, 
in the calm, philosophic attempt to justify some few 
precepts. 

This, to begin with : the prettiest dress is one 



THE ART OF SELF 113 

that escapes remark, and yet makes the most of its 
wearer. 

There is a certain natural elegance, as becoming 
to a woman as blossom to a tree, and quite able to 
dispense with assistance from too obtrusive an art. 
The marks of a true great lady are, as we know, 
simplicity and kindliness. 

Who could take seriously a doll, a nonentity, 
whose pocket gapes behind her if that be the 
fashion, or who has no pocket at all ; deprived of 
the use of her arms by the pinching or the puffing 
of her sleeves, and still less mistress of her legs, 
to whose use she is unaccustomed ? A man may 
amuse himself with her, or find amusement through 
her ; but have any manner of confidence in her, 
never ! 

On the other hand, too many women professedly 
serious assert their virtue by an untidiness of ap- 
pearance most distressing to the eye, pleading that 
beauty of soul is all-sufficient. Such sexless dowdies 
you may see dusting their dear vicar's vestry, or 
rolling in certain carriages through our streets. 
Surely they come short in a rigorous social duty 
when they exhibit virtue or maturity under aspects 
so forbidding. 

The Gospel nowhere says, " Blessed are they 

that change not their linen." I grant you that the 

body is not everything ; but neither, surely, is it 

H 



Ii4 THE ART OF LIFE 

absolutely nothing. It is a beautiful object, to be 
respected. Without it we should never have been 
born, nor should we possess any means of express- 
ing our ideas. Body and spirit are partners in a 
strange association ; they are the closest of friends. 
If we happen to be at all out of sorts, do we feel 
that our minds are free ? 

The body, then, must be taken for better or 
worse, as the medium of our relations with the 
external world. Your attire, Madam, ought to 
signify that your attitude is neither prudish nor 
familiar, but that, being a woman — in other words, 
the physical representation of charm — you are per- 
forming your true function, matching your tastes 
with your years like well-paired horses. 

" Oh ! " you exclaim, " that 's a lesson not likely 
to suit my husband's taste. He, surely, is the 
person I must please — principally, at all events. 
Well, a proof of how very far I am from despising 
my modest charms is that I spend a good deal on 
my wardrobe ; indeed, he tells me that I spend too 
much. What am I to do, then ? for there is no 
middle course ; one must either dress or not dress ; 
I defy you to escape that dilemma. Very well ; 
how am I to dress if you won't let me buy the 
dress that's being worn, or go to a respectable 
milliner for my hats ? " 1 

1 O. Greard. 



THE ART OF SELF 115 

There is something in your objection ; you must 
indeed dress ! But I am not much impressed with 
your phrase " the dress that 's being worn." Why 
this subjection — in my humble opinion carried a 
little too far ? Ah ! I should like to see the Chief 
Commissioner of Police ordaining the cut of your 
dresses, or the Pope, say, decreeing by encyclical 
whether you might wear feathers in your hats, or 
little birds, claws and all ! What law is there, what 
penalty if you disobey ? The law is that a dress 
must suit your own individuality ; and the penalty, 
that certain hats will disfigure you. 

Yet there is something to be said for fashion. 
For one thing, it is a signal for renewing the 
wardrobe, and so is good for trade ; without it 
one might be tempted to effect many surreptitious 
economies ! A second point, and a still more 
serious one, is that it satisfies the eye aesthetically, 
the corollary being that a thing has no sooner 
gone out of fashion than it seems ridiculous ; while, 
conversely, such few objections as are raised 
against the mode of the day are timid and hesi- 
tating. All this is very true, and the natural con- 
sequence is extremely disagreeable. It has happened, 
when certain pronounced styles have been in vogue, 
that the streets seemed full of nothing but peram- 
bulating costumes : all the women were absolutely, 
indistinguishably, alike. 



n6 THE ART OF LIFE 

" Well," you reply, " that, at any rate, keeps us 
from ^-dreaming about flounces and furbelows, and 
making undue calls on our imagination. Don't 
we spend enough time, as it is, at the dressmaker's 
and the shops ? Do you want us to be bond- 
slaves to vanity every minute of the day — to do 
nothing but think of our fal-lals ? That was all 
very well, perhaps, in quiet, aristocratic times — 
for your great Renaissance ladies, let us say. 
But we have no time for that sort of thing 
nowadays." No time ! Excuse the shadow of 
a smile. Sleeping or waking, every woman's 
mind keeps a corner free for her toilet ; and 'tis 
fortunate it is so ! The uniformity of our mas- 
culine costumes is so terrible a brand of decadence 
and ennui. 

Dress, however, is not a mere matter of imagina- 
tion or whim. It has incontestable principles, which 
it would be a mistake to disregard. 

There is, first of all, the principle of verticality. 

A woman, as every one will admit, is a vertical 
creature who moves horizontally. From this 
characteristic proceeds her rank in the scale of 
being. 

In all ages, and among all races, the mountain 
peak has been regarded as a thing of beauty, a 
neighbour of the stars, a friend to high thought 
and divine loneliness; whilst horizontal lines are 



THE ART OF SELF 117 

typical of earthliness, dependence, humbleness 
even. So, in regard to dress, ladies may be divided 
into two schools : the perpendicular school, with 
something of the dignity of a frowning rock, and 
the horizontal school, seemingly ever on the 
point of dropping on their knees — though to 
kneel is sometimes a source of comfort, perhaps 
of strength. 

Vertical lines, when they can be supported with- 
out an appearance of stiffness or angularity, pro- 
duce the most pleasurable impression, provided they 
are softened by a delicate roundness of figure ; 
and the effect is completed by a lofty hat sur- 
mounting a studied and expressive arrangement 
of the hair. Colours, too, have their moral signifi- 
cance, and should be matched with the colours 
of the soul, as indeed is done in the case of mourn- 
ing, ostensibly because black cannot fade : as 
though only our buried feelings were immortal ! In 
olden days black was the colour of constancy, 
and white was the mourning colour, the symbol 
of an empty, loveless heart ; red betokened joy ; 
blue, a peaceable and quiet mind ; yellow or golden, 
an energetic temperament. 

Every one of us knows the importance of the 
right choice of materials, as regulated by con- 
siderations of age, the seasons, the time of day, 
and the different effects desired. 



n8 THE ART OF LIFE 

Some materials are dull and sober, and others 
bright ; soft, filmy, luminous muslins, and severe 
or stately velvets, cloths suggestive of dignity and 
comfort, and demanding the tailor's art. All these 
stuffs multiply a woman ; yet beneath all her vari- 
ous habiliments she must needs preserve her 
individuality. Between dress and wearer there 
is a general proportion which should never vary, 
and, above all, the characteristic accent, so to 
speak, of her costume should always remain the 
same. 

The general practice of carefully bisecting a 
woman — that is, of garbing the bust as the nobler 
part of the body, following its contours more or 
less closely, while burying the lower part of the 
body in a skirt shaped like a bell and not a little 
ungainly — this practice is one which we should 
certainly never dare to condemn. But the Greeks, 
those great lovers of pure beauty, regarded the 
several parts of the human form as equally 
worthy of adornment ; and in the East, to this 
day, their ideas on this matter are opposed to 
our own. The principle underlying our notions 
of clothing claims a religious and ideal basis — a 
principle of artificial and subtle gradation, that aims 
at evoking an ascending scale of effects from heel 
to head, and at concentrating the attention chiefly 
on the eyes and hair, which on this theory acquire 



THE ART OF SELF 119 

a legitimate importance. But it also gives rise 
to many disadvantages. 

In any case, it is an exceedingly mischievous 
principle to make the skirts too full, and still more, 
to increase their dilatation by means of bustles or 
other deplorable subterfuges ; mischievous is it, 
too, to lengthen the waist or to emphasise the line 
of cleavage : the result is a total loss of harmony. 
The attempt has sometimes been made to combine 
upper and lower parts into one pleasing whole, 
especially by means of Watteau mantles. In truth, 
the best plan is to separate them as little as possible, 
and, since there must be petticoats, to attend more 
particularly to the underwear, avoiding undue dis- 
tention of the skirt, and above all being scrupu- 
lously careful not to load it with special trimmings, 
such as frills and flounces, which the bodice does 
not suggest, or to give it an appearance of de- 
tachment by brighter colours. 

The result of the concealment of the lower limbs 
has been to give the boot a vast importance. A 
pretty foot suggests pretty hands, and helps the 
mind to grasp the unity of the person. 

The bodice, unquestionably, has been for a long 
time invested with exaggerated importance. The 
collarets and ruffs of the sixteenth century, so 
fashionable at the present moment, produce an 
effect of short-neckedness, though also of dignity. 



120 THE ART OF LIFE 

On the other hand, leg-of-mutton sleeves (the name 
alone tells how much the thing is worth) are totally 
wanting in monumental character. Why not have 
more confidence in the beauty of the arm ? De- 
vices for the improvement of ill-shaped arms are 
obviously defensible ; but the arm has great possi- 
bilities of distinction ; it delineates the gesture 
and is an index of the will ; gloves and a fan 
are excellent adjuncts; and its shapely curves and 
contours, terminated by a dainty wrist, constitute a 
real attraction. 

In a word, all that a woman wears, everything 
that she uses, should in a sense be wedded to her, 
and bring out her personality. One little detail to 
finish with. The watches of the present day are 
pitiful objects, always circular and uniform and 
commonplace. In days of old they were jewels ; 
there are still in existence watches of all shapes, in 
the form of boxes, crosses, bowls, lilies, and so on. 
Might we not revert to this pretty idea, of making 
all our belongings personal ? 

No doubt these preoccupations as to dress and 
toilet may appear futile, and even paltry, as 
indeed they are if they are inspired merely by the 
futile and paltry spirit we call vanity. But there 
is a sacred form of vanity, which does not aim 
at being beautiful for one's own personal gratifica- 
tion, but recognises that beauty has a considerable 



THE ART OF SELF 121 

influence in this world, and that in exercising its 
ministry one is accomplishing a divine, and, so to 
say, a sacerdotal work. 

This is no exaggeration. What the Ecclesiast 
called a lamp burning upon a golden candlestick 
has become, for Christian aesthetics, a divine mani- 
festation, or, adopting Cardinal Bembo's phrase, 
the reflection, the influsso of God, through the 
medium of a woman's face ! God, Madam, has set 
His seal upon you, and has said to you, "Lo, this 
is what the whole world shall sing : Behold the 
symbol of the world, the unity and proportion of 
form, the harmony and, so to speak, the love of 
the members one for another. All is love in thee, 
and thy whole body seemeth a strain of music, 
uplifting us towards the divine." I am borrowing 
St. Augustine's words. And St. Bernard also in- 
vites you to cherish the flesh, with sobriety, with a 
certain spiritual temperance, so that you may bear 
worthily the seal of God. 

All things become admirable from the moment 
you seek to glorify, not yourselves, but in you 
and by you the universal beauty. One could not 
do better in this connection than to quote St. 
Augustine again. He carries his enthusiasm so 
far as to declare that the Creator, in fashioning 
man's bodily frame, preferred beauty to necessity ; 
" for," he adds, " necessity must pass away, but 



122 THE ART OF LIFE 

a time will come when we shall enjoy beauty 
alone, each other's beauty, without impure 
desire. And for this cause we should more 
especially glorify the Creator, to whom the 
Psalmist says, 'Thou art clothed with beauty 
and honour.' " 1 

Seek beauty, then ; I do not say seek her franti- 
cally, but frankly, sincerely — permit me to say, 
bravely. Make your whole existence, in the words 
of the Apostle, " a living sacrifice, which is your 
reasonable service," since the end set before it 
is to shed beauty around you — a holy end, that 
ennobles all things. 

The true, pure beauty is beauty of soul, just 
as the truest love has no taint of sensuality. Learn 
then the meaning of the phrase " Be beautiful." 
It means that physical charm must concur, but 
concur merely, in the ultimate production of 
beauty. 

A very common prejudice, often besetting the 
most brilliant minds, regards art as almost in- 
evitably destined to become immoral, aestheticism 
as a Pagan creed, and Christianity as based upon 
the mortification of the flesh. To me that theory 
seems extravagant, and, in truth, somewhat de- 
grading. It is my belief that life is ennobled 
when it is lifted a degree above the utilitarian 

1 City of God, Book xxii. 



THE ART OF SELF 123 

morality, that beauty is the consecration of exis- 
tence, and its supreme perfection, and that this 
truth has been clearly brought out by the 
Christian distinction between sestheticism and 
sensualism. To relegate the body to its due 
place is right ; to suppress it would be wrong, 
because it is the instrument of our life, and our 
guide towards beauty. 

The ancient Greeks, no doubt, carried their 
worship of beautiful form to extremes — so far, 
indeed, that instead of our modern agricultural 
shows, devoted to the improvement of cows and 
carrots, they had competitions of various kinds 
for the improvement of the human race. We 
apparently go to the other extreme by striving 
mainly for the deterioration of the race ; and how 
it happens that so much daintiness of figure and 
refinement of feature is still left to us, is a question 
to be asked. 

To seek for the ultimate beauty in the purely 
physical life would clearly be an error, and what 
is more, a culpable error. What we are in love 
with, after all, is our love ; and, if we will only 
admit it, the mere illusion suffices, from the 
moment it responds to our desires. There is 
nothing in the least paradoxical or transcendental 
in this notion ; it is a matter of daily experience. 
Is it necessary to our enjoyment of a picture to 



I2 4 THE ART OF LIFE 

believe that it is not a picture ? What fascinates 
us in a landscape is less Nature than our dream 
of Nature ; not that which we see, but that 
which we feel and imagine. It is not Nature 
that we love, but the emotion she produces in 
us, the manner in which she beautifies reality by 
her plays of light and shade. 

It may be acknowledged also that a woman, 
however much beloved, is only a pretext ; our 
true gain is the ideal world of which she is the 
centre, and which we possess of inalienable right. 
And the conclusion is, that Beauty has a real 
existence only if we know how to profit by it ; 
otherwise it is but " a jewel of gold in a swine's 
snout." Are you beautiful, Madam, in the abso- 
lute sense of the word ? I know not ; indeed, I 
care not. One thing, and one alone, is important : 
the impression you make. Bend over the edge 
of a pool and see your image ; it is only an 
illusion, yet there it is. I am the pool in 
which you are reflected. In clear and unruffled 
serenity I hold your perfect image ; but if you 
disquiet me, your image will be distorted and 
bedimmed. 

Not the physical explanation of beauty, but 
the fact, the perception of beauty, is our concern. 
To quote St. Augustine once again: "There are 
two beauties," he says: "the one, that which our 



THE ART OF SELF 125 

judgment approves; the other, that which thrills 
us " 1 — in other words, which we love, and which, 
if you will, may be called charm. How does a 
woman with no pretensions to beauty thrill us, 
enthrall us ? It is hard to give a scientific ex- 
planation. " Thou art not a man comely of form, 
thou art not of much wisdom, thou art not noble 
of birth," said one of his monks to St. Francis of 
Assisi ; " yet all men run after thee." 2 But 
St. Francis gave himself freely to his fellows, 
and probably the charm exercised by certain 
women springs in no slight measure from the 
same source. They have a wealth of expression, 
and in consequence communicate something of 
their moral personality. Every impressionable 
person makes an impression on others ; the in- 
fluence is reflex and reciprocal. 

The redness or pallor of the cheeks, the bright- 
ness or dimness of the eyes, touch sympathetic 
chords. There are some eyes which stir our 
being to its depths, and whose glances are ample 
solace for all our woes. Gesture and bearing 
also have their importance ; mere details possess 
a force ; silky hair, for instance, even on aged 
people, gives us a wonderful impression of gen- 
tleness. 

1 Confessions, Book iv. cap. xiii. 

2 Little Flowers of St. Francis, cap. x. 



126 THE ART OF LIFE 

And it is curious that a man's gesture and 
bearing exert an influence on the man himself. 
The Jesuits show a profound knowledge of the 
human machine when, in their ( Exercises/ they 
recommend a heedful attention to the attitude of 
prayer ; to kneel, and clasp the hands, and close 
the eyes, are matters of no trivial concern. They 
affect the onlooker, but they affect also the person 
kneeling. 

We must attain, then, a certain degree of 
mastery over the physical expression of the 
emotions. Yet the most winsome faces will be 
those on which the emotions are freely portrayed ; 
the faces of some women have a mobility that is 
at once delightful and discomposing, but so ex- 
pressive that one flash is as eloquent as Bossuet, 
with an eloquence to which all the senses con- 
tribute. 

A woman is also judged by her favourite scent, 
or by her voice. One has an organ like an 
auctioneer's ; another speaks in a musical ripple, 
turning all the various inflexions of a wide register 
to exquisite account, and stealing into a conversa- 
tion with crystalline notes, low, grave, caressing, 
affecting us marvellously. 

In the sixteenth century, the French mode of 
greeting a lady was to kiss her cheek or lips ; at a 
later time the hand was kissed ; nowadays the 



THE ART OF SELF 127 

American hand-grip prevails. This is a pity, for 
the modern hand-clasp means very little. Whereas 
every pleasant contact is a caress ; among all living 
creatures, from the highest to the lowest — from 
the cats and the donkeys, which rub against each 
other to the apes which caress their offspring 
with a rough gentleness — every sentiment of 
affection has its accompanying physical contact, 
which becomes, so to speak, its natural consecra- 
tion. 

A woman, then, should never offer her hand 
unless intending a graceful or kindly act, and to 
every hand so offered men's lips should be applied 
with a sentiment of affection or respect. To kiss 
hands was in olden days the general custom of the 
Italians — a custom they turned so pleasantly to 
account that women, even, could, with an exquisitely 
tender art, kiss the hand of a greybeard or a man 
they wished to honour, without wounding his feel- 
ings. The populace were ever ready to kiss the 
hem of one's garment, and it was thought quite a 
natural thing to kiss the Pope's toe. It is a pity 
that these refinements in the art of touch have 
entirely disappeared. 

But we cannot dwell on all these little problems ; 
let us resume them in a single word : A. woman's 
charm consists in the art of making all intercourse 
with her agreeable. 



128 THE ART OF LIFE 

In other words, the essence of physical charm is 
actually a moral charm. 

And this leads us to a further conclusion : Not 
only is charm something quite distinct from 
physical beauty, but it is open to question whether 
beauty as such really ministers to charm, — indeed, 
whether it does not sometimes detract from it ; 
for it is a weapon, Madam, of which you are not 
absolutely mistress, — a sword of fire, that burns the 
hand. It seems at first sight to make everything 
so easy ; but a woman would greatly err in trusting 
to the strength of a purely material stimulus, shut- 
ting her eyes to the fact that such a source 
of excitement is not particularly flattering, and 
soon leads to practical results which speedily 
transgress the limits of art. Even with her own 
husband a woman ought to eschew this kind of 
influence, and to make her chief preoccupation 
that which survives the brilliance of the epidermis, 
or such brilliance as ribands and stuffed birds 
afford. 

It behoves her, then, to foster the expression of 
her soul : this is the formula of physical charm — 
to seize her visitors by a general air of brightness 
and sincerity. A girl may sit stiff, with silent lips, 
showing but her profile or quarter-face, her inner life 
a closed book to you. But her mother, her fine figure 



THE ART OF SELF 129 

still retaining something of its compactness, should 
give you her full face, and sit in comfortable 
amplitude, with parted knees and free arms, 
the look in her eyes rather deep than reticent, 
or lost in her own inward visions, her lips 
savourous and alive — lips that have tasted of life, 
and sip at it still with something of a regretful 
disenchantment. 

"When thou fastest, anoint thine head/' said the 
Master. " If thine eye be single, thy whole body 
shall be full of light." 

In general, women attach rather too much 
importance to an expression of good-humour. 
Genuine cheerfulness is a sort of physical 
expansion ; the circulation is quickened, the 
cheeks glow, the eyes shine, the head is held 
high and the figure erect. All this is excellent, 
but does not necessarily result in establishing a 
sympathetic connection. 

Nor does laughter ; though to some folk the 
facile universal laugh is charming. But the con- 
tortions of laughter are extremely ugly, to say 
nothing of its aggressiveness. We dread to 
weep ; but what more beautiful than eyes moist 
with tears ? Nature herself follows up laughter 
with tears, to soften and obliterate it. Were I 
to speak my whole mind, I should dare to say 



130 THE ART OF LIFE 

that men are made for laughter, and women for 
tears. 

The smile is quite a different thing from the 
laugh : a gentle streamlet, rather than a bursting 
flood. Do not confuse this with the stereotyped 
grin of idiots, or with the conventional smirk 
of a woman who fancies that grimace is grace. 
The true smile, silent, reserved, more common 
with children and the aged than with people in full 
vigour of life, is a measured expansion, a state 
rather than an act. It dwells more particularly in 
the eyes, which then become soft, and clear, and 
deep. 

Women's greatest ornament is enthusiasm ; there 
are some who, under its transfiguring, quickening 
radiance, remain admirably young and fascinating 
to an age when beauty would be out of the 
question ; it is good to see their sweet faces, and 
eyes beaming with warmth and kindness and a 
sort of divine intoxication. Some enjoy an inward 
vitality which at times gives them wings. Like you 
and me, they come into contact with mundane 
things, handle them, employ and govern them ; 
yet always without subjection to them. And the 
singular thing is that these women, setting no store 
on the details of life, are the women who make us 
love them most. 



THE ART OF SELF 131 

The opposite type is the woman who is crushed 
by her environment, the slave of circumstance. 
She tries to appear a valorous rebel against the 
restraints of life by affecting piquant little acts of 
mutiny, which leave an impression of nervous 
debility ; and her reward is to be called insipid, 
tiresome, an utter bore. 

No art, no genius, no charm has such eloquence 
and beauty as the woman so well attempered as to 
have mastery of life, to appear unconscious of its 
only too real thorns, and I will even say, to exercise 
serene sway over the ruck of human appetites ever 
thronging so close about her. No religion is loftier, 
no science more profound, than that which inspires 
the consolidation of all members of society, noisy, 
glittering, or wretched, into one synthesis of 
goodness. 

The strong, good woman is the supreme mani- 
festation of art ; she holds the secret of life ; she is 
the flower and crown of the world. 

At once enthusiastic and practical, active and 
gracious, she carries with her a subtle atmosphere 
of sweetness and strength. There is nothing of the 
virago about her ; sometimes, indeed, her outward 
aspect may be delicate, timid. But a look from her, 
the sound of her voice, pierces us through ; that 
light and gentle hand of hers, which seems made 



132 THE ART OF LIFE 

but for kisses, shapes our destiny, and we are sur- 
prised to feel thrilling within us chords hitherto 
mute. 

If we were animals and nothing more, all these 
details would escape us. The animal is susceptible 
of physical suggestion, can even enjoy the sense of 
illusion; but it has no understanding of art, because 
it lacks the imagination necessary to complete its 
impressions. 

Art, as we have remarked, is at bottom only a 
creation of the spectator's imagination. A picture, 
a strain of music, would be nothing but colour and 
noise were not their effect to stir our imagination, 
which does the rest. A ruin carefully restored, and 
therefore no longer appealing to the imagination, 
might as well not be. Woman, likewise, would be 
but a concourse of atoms, unless by her imitative 
genius and her power of conveying impressions 
she touched our imagination, and suggested to it 
the sense of a larger life. Imagination is, so to 
speak, a peptone, assisting the mind's digestion, and 
furthering the assimilation of its food. Women 
minister to our imagination, assisting thus towards 
our digestion of life. 

I employ this somewhat prosaic figure^ inten- 
tionally, in the hope of heightening the credit 
of the imagination, which is accused of not being 



THE ART OF SELF 133 

practical, and is in consequence disdained. Yet 
it is most necessary to hold it in right estimation, 
for its effects are incontestable. The chronicles 
of our land, in particular, are filled with the 
follies or the acts of heroism to which the 
imagination has impelled us ; and not so very 
long ago we w r ere able to regard it as the queen 
of our society. 

In the days when passing strangers, instead of 
visiting the drains, the ' Metropolitain,' or other use- 
ful, but as a rule subterranean, objects, made pious pil- 
grimage to the bedroom of Madame Recamier, that 
bedroom clearly played an important part in the 
destinies of France. In those days, Frenchwomen 
received homage from the whole world, and espe- 
cially from Englishmen. An Englishman named 
Trotter wrote that the Frenchwoman seemed born 
" to make man's life a dream of happiness, in which 
flowers spring up around his footsteps, while the 
very air he breathes is perfumed." Pinkerton 
speaks glowingly of the Parisienne, " who, in spite 
of her frank ways and her liberty to form real 
friendships, is none the less a model wife and 
mother." " It would take months and years," 
writes Miss Plumptre, " to discover how many 
amiable and honourable women there are in 
Paris." Sociability, gaiety, kindliness, the general 



134 THE ART OF LIFE 

desire to charm and be charmed — these, along 
with a few saving defects, are the distinctive 
features of a society so ruled. All this is born 
of the imagination, but imagination has never 
been inconsistent with intelligence or courage. 



CHAPTER THE SIXTH 

MODESTY 

" A shamefast woman is grace upon grace." 
— Ecci.esiasticus xxvi. 

" That man which glories in his raiment is 
like unto a robber that glories in the brand of 
iron wherewith he is branded, since it was 
Adam's sin that rendered garments necessary." 
— St. Bernard. 

" They are the veil that hideth our shame." 
— St. Thomas of Aquinas. 

The active employment of the imagination obeys, 
in the social world, a number of special rules, 
known as the laws and customs of polite society — a 
sort of administrative code not unlike the railway 
time-table : a compost of morality, fashion, and 
settled habits, with no logic, necessarily, to boast of. 
A woman who should nowadays receive her friends 
in her dressing-room in the morning, as was done 
in the sixteenth century, would be a laughing- 
stock, while it is thought quite right and proper for 
her to go out to dinner in the evening with very 
bare shoulders, the cynosure of footmen's eyes, or 
to dance with any Tom, Dick, or Harry. This dis- 
tinction is beyond me. Endless similar points will 



136 THE ART OF LIFE 

occur to you. However, though we may not defy 
the code of etiquette, we can at all events discuss 
it ; and indeed, it forms a fruitful subject for medi- 
tation. Unhappily, it is too vast a theme to deal 
with here, especially as the first law of etiquette is 
not to debate it in writing. We shall therefore con- 
fine ourselves to a summary treatment of one of the 
elementary actions demanded by the proprieties — 
the action of clothing oneself. 



Why do we dress ? A very ridiculous question, 
says some one, and of no earthly interest, for the 
whole world is unanimous on the point, except the 
savages. Not at all : the answers of civilised people 
to the question exhibit a considerable variety, and 
that is a fact of high importance in regard to modes 
of dress. 

The utilitarians, the realists, the evolutionists, 
all pretty much in evidence at the present time, 
say that we clothe ourselves as a matter of utility* 
to avoid rain and cold and the bites of insects. 
In a happy land where to be covered was not 
obligatory, and no one wore clothes, to go naked 
would be neither more shocking nor more inartistic 
than to be dressed. It is a mere matter of physical 
conservation. 



MODESTY 137 

Religion introduces a new element. To the 
Christian the question is one of moral conserva- 
tion : clothing dissembles and cloaks the flesh ; by 
concealing it from sight and defending it from 
touch, raiment fortifies our weakness, and forms 
almost a part of our individuality ; to deprive us of 
it would involve us in peril, or at least in shame 
and decadence. In this connection St. Bonaven- 
ture likens a monk in secular attire to a layman 
without clothes, 1 and fancies that he has gone the 
extreme length of opprobrium. 

Needless to add that to every pious soul the 
bodily functions appear base beside those of the 
reason, and that, consequently, it is not for us 
to make our boast in them. As a matter of fact 
we affect to ignore them all — except the act of 
eating (I know not why, for to swallow food is no 
nobler than any other of our physical feats, and 
yet we do our best to lend it grace, and meet to 
perform it in company) ; and on this point Chris- 
tianity and aesthetics coincide. 

To lovers of beauty dress is an art, as well as 
a physical or moral necessity. They do not don 
raiment merely to keep oft the cold or to dissemble 
the flesh, but, on the contrary, to set themselves 
off to the best advantage, in virtue of a certain 
aesthetic and purely sentimental instinct called 

1 The Mirror of Discipline. 



138 THE ART OF LIFE 

modesty. Every animal, they say, shows a rudi- 
mentary trace of this instinct, even the dog, which 
at certain times feels it incumbent on him to fling 
up earth behind. Modesty is like a thermometer 
of more or less exquisite sensibility ; and the proof 
that it is an instinct, depending rather on the 
aesthetic sense than on pure reason, is that it is 
much more delicate with creatures of pure sensi- 
bility — young girls, for instance — than with men. 
It is innate, and not acquired ; cold reason and the 
wear and tear of life tend to destroy rather than 
to develop it ; and a close physiological relation 
has been observed to exist between the sense of 
modesty and the physical sensibility of the femi- 
nine organs. 

Modesty has for its end, not to cover up beauty 
or to raise obstacles to its effect, which is love, 
but to give to beauty all possible scope for the 
production of this effect. It musters defensive 
forces, then, against two contingencies : first, the 
case where the subject, the soul of the beholder, 
is not duly prepared to conceive love ; secondly, 
the case where the object, namely, the beauty in 
question, is in itself too imperfect to evoke love. 
I will say, then, adopting terms in current use, 
that modesty is an instinct, either of sensibility or 
of coquetry. 

It follows that in principle there is nothing 



MODESTY 139 

degrading in the exhibition of the beauty of the 
body ; rather the reverse : when the body is beau- 
tiful, we find Fenelon, for instance, as a critic of 
art, praising a statue of Venus in all sincerity, 
because it is " a thorough Venus." 

Now, Christian metaphysic 1 comes strongly to 
the reinforcement of this position in professing 
that our bodies will rise one day in a glorified 
state, that is, in a state of pure form, in ethereal 
radiance and beauty, exempt from the serviceable 
organs of the flesh ; they will live thenceforth on 
love, and diffuse pure love around them. It is 
curious that the science of to-day tends to confirm 
these ideal anticipations. It asserts that the human 
being is composed of conglomerate microbes, more 
or less considerable, controlled more or less thor- 
oughly by him, and retained or eliminated by a host 
of means almost unsuspected, such as contiguity, at- 
tractions, sensations; yet not belonging indefeasibly 
to him, but living for themselves. The human form 
that God has given to this machine of which we 
have the enjoyment, is almost the only physical 
possession really our own ; and truly there is some- 
thing uplifting and beautiful in the doctrine that, 
while all these microbes will escape from us, to 
resume their life elsewhere, our form will live on, 
subject to no change, divested of physical mechan- 

1 See St. Thomas of Aquinas on St. Matthew xxii. 



140 THE ART OF LIFE 

ism, divested even, if I may say so, of intellectual 
mechanism, that is, of the faculty of reason, but 
whole and complete in point of sensibility and the 
capacity for joy. 

Thus our physical being is our form, and it is 
possible to conceive of an ideal life in which this 
form, exquisite, flawless, should awaken blameless 
admiration. Unhappily, such a state is hardly 
possible in this present life ; hence modesty comes 
to the aid of aesthetics. Beauty must needs evoke 
love ; otherwise, the sight of it constitutes a sort 
of profanation. Such deshabilles as we see some- 
times, utilitarian or sensual, clearly have none but 
a fleshly value, and are degrading. 

Clothing, then, is to be a defence against every- 
thing that is not lawful and perfect love. But it 
may minister, in rightful subordination, to beauty. 
True beauty being rare, art always implies careful 
selection and assortment. Heaven is only distin- 
guishable from the earth because it hides something 
from our view. What could be less pleasing than 
the lowlands of the North, or La Beauce — bare, 
flat, uninteresting, revealing themselves to the first 
glance ? How much fonder we are of the variety, 
the mystery, of the mountains, even of those that 
are easy of access! If modesty were unknown, art 
would counsel us to invent it. Watch the methods 
of the great artists, those masters of witchery : 



MODESTY 141 

Vinci's delicate moulding of form, avoiding over- 
sharpness of definition, wrapping his figures in 
a soft chiaroscuro : Correggio's caressing touch, 
giving his forms an exquisite, luminous softness, 
drowned, we may say, in light, and appealing at 
once to sense and to emotion. Assuredly, art 
consists at all times in restraint, in suggesting 
more than it reveals ; illusion, suggestion, pave 
the way for happiness, and perhaps contribute to 
it. And we can now understand the vast import- 
ance attaching to the sentiment of modesty : what 
an aesthetic force, what a form and pressure of 
attraction it represents, since the act of looking 
having a subtle touch of possession, it blends the 
idea of intimacy with those of mystery and privi- 
lege. To preserve your womanhood is to preserve 
your bloom, to consider your body itself as an object 
of worship, which at all times and in all circum- 
stances it behoves to regard as beautiful. From 
the aesthetic standpoint, then, the raiment does not 
form part of our being ; not in that does beauty 
dwell ; but its mission is to companion with our 
physical person, to serve it, harmonise with it, do 
it the fullest justice, and give all possible finish to 
it by correcting its defects. 



142 THE ART OF LIFE 

Well, now, how are we to reconcile this spirit 
of modesty with the incivilities of life ? Of the 
same clay, says the Apostle, the potter makes 
vessels of honour or of dishonour. 1 You favour 
women and girls with eulogies of purity, the 

sanctity of the body, and then ! Will not life's 

commonest experiences to-morrow flatly contra- 
dict this nobility of sentiments ? You will your- 
selves declare impracticable what you were vaunting 
yesterday, and the upshot will be that, to the 
harshness of things as they are, you will but add 
one cruelty the more. 

A troublesome question indeed ; so troublesome 
that, for all its eminently practical character, the 
world prefers, as a rule, not to discuss it. It is 
passed over in significant silence. A woman of 
refinement will make a merit of never opening a 
medical book, and of being ignorant of the ele- 
ments of what she ought really to know : she 
would just as soon have an undraped statue in her 
drawing-room. And yet, if her health give the 
slightest warning, suggest the slightest suspicion — 

1 [In the original, " II faut itre dieu, table ou cuvette, comme dit le 
Fabuhste" alluding to La Fontaine's fable of the sculptor and the 
statue of Jupiter, beginning — 

" Un bloc de marbre etait si beau 
Qu'un statuaire en fit l'emplette. 
Qu'en fera, dit-il, mon ciseau? 
Sera-t-il dieu, table ou cuvette ? "] 



MODESTY 143 

hesitate ? why should she hesitate ? It is her hus- 
band's wish, everybody does the same, and no one 
will know ! 

There are many virtuous wives, but very few 
chaste. 

The very respect due to genuine science, and to 
the devoted pursuit of it, might well put us on our 
guard against certain abuses to which medicine is 
liable. But I shall not repeat M. L6on Daudet's 
scathing strictures in regard to doctors — the moral 
apprenticeship they serve to-day, their influence 
on women, and their conduct towards them. 

In olden days, it was before their lackeys that 
great ladies knew no shame, because they did not 
look on them as being men at all. Yet that invete- 
rate scandal-monger, Brantome, relates that one 
day, when a lackey, on being interrogated by his 
lady, with all respect protested his neutrality, she 
retorted with a cuffing. 

It had been the policy of the Middle Ages to 
fence in the medical profession with special safe- 
guards : they pinned their faith to somewhat ex- 
ceptional principles, and required doctors to be 
clerks, and consequently unmarried. A counsel of 
desperation indeed ! After all, a doctor is a man, 
and unquestionably you will knock up against him 
in life, talk to him, dine with him. Then, if you 
honour him with certain confidences, why should 



144 THE ART OF LIFE 

you not consider him, not merely as a man, but 
as an intimate friend ? As a matter of fact, there 
are logical women who find in these relations a 
very special tie. 

I do not say that you are doing wrong (we are 
discussing, not morals, but aesthetics) ; but I do 
think that every woman who respects herself, and 
has the honourable anxiety to please, ought not to 
pare away her charm, even of the physical order. 
Some women, through indifference, the utilitarian 
spirit, or even a tendency to mysticism, seem to 
fancy themselves to be women in some circum- 
stances and not in others ; they think that charm 
is a garment, to be put on and off at pleasure. Ah ! 
you may put it off, but not put it on again. The 
preachers of all ages have thundered against the 
bared bosom ; yet a modicum of coquetry perhaps 
contributes to the conservation of the human species, 
while certain grossnesses, scientific though they be, 
diminish it. 

You will reply : " What is one to do ? Do 
you fancy that that is a pleasure ? We put up 
with it." 

If so, it is only through prejudice. You have 
allowed it to be said that women are vain, useless 
things, and you believe it increasingly. Even in 
the traditional cases, you now regard women as 



MODESTY 145 

incapable of practising medicine, considering that 
only the direst poverty justifies recourse to them 
for tendance, and that nursing is not * genteel ' ; 
whereas it is well known that they can bring the 
most brilliant talents to the study of medicine, 
and are peculiarly endowed with the special gifts 
of attention, gentleness, deftness of hand, sure- 
ness of memory. In Russia, even in Germany, an 
ever-widening field of medical work is opening 
before them ; while in France, as in Turkey, the 
movement is all in the other direction, many 
ladies of fashion carrying naivete so far as to 
believe that man alone is the universal monopolist 
of science, be it merely so much science as is 
required to turn on a shower-bath or direct a 
garden-hose. In these matters we must tell the 
truth even to girls ; for our young daughters are 
interested nowadays in these practical questions ! 
For some years past the law has stepped in to 
strengthen and protect the monopoly of the doctors. 
The pettiest village leech of to-day stands forth as 
the embodiment of l science,' and monopolises it — 
which is perhaps saying a good deal. To science 
liberty is the breath of life ; yet, while no one 
talks more of liberty than the majority of doctors, 
their science is the only one that is deprived 
of it. A man may do anything he pleases, except 
manufacture lucifer matches or poultice a boil ! 



146 THE ART OF LIFE 

We have accomplished innumerable revolutions ; 
yet in the sacred realm of physiology we are for- 
bidden to know anything, though we be a Claude 
Bernard or a Pasteur. 1 Monopoly never forgives. 
It invokes not merely reason, but the proprieties. 
A professional man without a diploma is incon- 
ceivable. Can you imagine a woman with one ? 
Really now, would it be decent for a woman to 
attend a man ? Can you see her stooping over a 
medical work, assisting at a dissection, mixing 
with the hospital students ? And do but think 
of her knowing them at home ! So things will 
go on, with an heroic simplicity : the women 
who fancy themselves the pink of intelligence will 
continue to maintain that women are fit for nothing 
but to starve if they attempt to work ; there is 
nothing wrong in this best of all possible worlds, 
and the preceding observations will appear ridicu- 
lous, and what is worse — irrelevant. 

From the purely artistic point of view, the power 
to blush is one of the most requisite and commend- 
able of physical endowments. Old men are past 
blushing ; very young children, idiots, and the lower 
animals cannot blush ; but it appears that some 
tribes still on the outskirts of barbarism preserve 

1 Not being physicians, Claude Bernard and Pasteur were not at 
liberty to practise. 



MODESTY 147 

the faculty to an astonishing degree. The blush 
is a grace of life, a mark of vitality and of youth- 
fulness. It betokens a great cerebral sensibility 
seconded by a perfectly sensitive skin. By a sort 
of instinct for personal defence, at the slightest 
attack — a word or a mere glance — there is a gush of 
energy : I say energy, and not emotion ; the heart 
beats no faster ; but a signal from the brain sends 
a rush of all the spare blood to the skin, and, 
owing to the congestion of the small blood-vessels, 
an extraordinary glow spreads over the face to the 
tips of the ear, to the roots of the hair, to the 
throat, sometimes even to the top of the bosom. 
Darwin saw the back of a young girl blush, and 
declares that in certain circumstances blushing 
may suffuse the whole body. It is as though the 
mind were hanging a curtain before the body, to 
assert its right of precedence. Fear and resignation 
manifest themselves differently : generally by a 
desire to hide. The child buries his face in his 
mother's skirts ; the ostrich tucks its head under 
its wing ; and in this sense it has been rightly said 
that " night knows no shame." To some people 
the darkness of night, or at any rate the precaution 
of closing their eyes, entirely modifies the impres- 
sion of a thing upon them. But this, I repeat, 
savours of reckless self-abandonment. 



148 THE ART OF LIFE 

" Oh ! could I but become a girl again for one 
hour ! " cried a woman at a moment of frenzied 
passion. Her passion was not so frenzied but that 
she saw clear ! No art, however exquisite, will 
ever be comparable to the frank, fresh, unspoilt 
grace of a modest girl. 

Women can at least preserve a certain reserve 
of conduct : modesty of speech, to wit ; modesty 
in the plays they see. No one would ask them, 
to be sure, to chase a dog from their dressing- 
room, like Madame de Stael ; but the tactful grace 
with which a lady, even though no longer young, 
can elevate or gently restrain a conversation, is 
a relic of modesty, which still has a charm of no 
little sweetness, and insensibly draws us to her. 



CHAPTER THE SEVENTH 

THE HIGH CROSS 

" We err if we believe that we give ourselves 
what we refuse to others ; to love ourselves 
overmuch is to love ourselves amiss. If you 
wish to be happy by yourself alone, you will 
never be happy ; all men will dispute your 
happiness ; but if you so act that all are happy 
with you, then the whole world will labour for 
your happiness." — Madame de Lambert. 

When they have once become the object of a 
sincere worship, all that is left for women to do is 
to be mothers. 

Their life, compassed about with charm and 
respect, would be a snare to them if they believed 
themselves idols, and laboured for their own 
behoof. They are only an instrument of life, a 
means, not an end ; hence both their greatness 
and their subjection. 

For us too there is subjection in submitting to 
the influence of a woman, a condition of servitude 
wretched indeed if we had the woman alone for 
the object of our devotion. Woman's greatness 
is to complete us. The union of a man with a 

woman completes their moral, as it completes 

149 



150 THE ART OF LIFE 

their physical, existence. A woman only attains 
her full womanhood by her spiritual union with 
a man. Likewise to man a woman is necessary, 
and the influence of the charm to which he thus 
becomes subject represents in reality only the trans- 
formation and the extension of his intellectual 
being. To fancy that he loses anything is thus 
impossible. 

If he resisted this charm, it would assuredly be 
to fall under some other influence, less natural or 
less necessary, from ambition down to those thou- 
sand and one slight influences that make up our 
life — novels, plays, newspapers, speeches, adver- 
tisements. 

Maternity is the act by which a woman, with the 
sacrifice of herself, ceases to be the end and be- 
comes a means — the act which develops her charm 
and influence into a living reality. 

Maternity is the physiological response to physical 
suggestion — a glorious act, but essentially limited, 
since it is material. Moral charm likewise ought 
to result in a moral maternity ; but this is nobler 
and vaster, and when the two maternities are 
found united in the state of marriage, the diffe- 
rence between them is immediately manifest : one 
would not think much of a mother who, wholly 
absorbed in physical cares, never troubled herself 
about the moral influence to be exercised on her 



THE HIGH CROSS 151 

children. On the contrary, as time goes on, the 
material bond between mother and child is bound 
to grow slacker and slacker. Suckling itself is but 
a secondary act ; providing spoon-meat is very 
different from suckling ; and so the tie is continu- 
ally loosened till the day when the child can do 
without her. But in proportion as the physical 
bond slackens, the moral bond ought but to grow 
firmer and stronger. The day your son is known 
for a brave, a brilliant, an honourable man, will 
you not feel more than ever his mother, with a 
deeper, an intenser feeling than when you nursed 
him at the breast ? 

The moral maternity and the physical mater- 
nity are so far independent, that the former is 
not limited by physical conditions ; its potency 
increases rather than diminishes with age, and 
neither widowhood nor spinsterhood is incon- 
sistent with it. 

How is this moral maternity to be described ? 
It consists in taking a man's intellectual acquire- 
ments and vivifying them with sentiment, or even 
in stirring emotions within the man, so as provoke 
an idea, and to assimilate it to themselves. 

Further, a man's emotion needs to be renewed, 
sustained, fed, regulated in some sort by means of 
contacts, memories, hopes. Just as the productivity 
of an estate is multiplied a hundred-fold by good 



152 THE ART OF LIFE 

cultivation — just as, with the advance of a country's 
civilisation, the sensibility and activity of its net- 
work of communications are enhanced — just as, 
the more money circulates, the more it produces : 
so, in a man cultivated, civilised, minted, so to 
speak, by a woman, the emotions develop and 
coalesce. Where one emotion has left a track, 
another will more easily make its way. But if the 
chain of emotions is allowed to break, they form a 
dead weight, and become a clog on life instead of a 
stimulus. 

There are emotions that are active, and others 
that are depressing, or even deadening, such as 
resignation. All have their part to play, because 
life, if it is to produce anything, needs a direct, 
vigorous, concentrated activity, which is naturally 
followed and counterbalanced by an equivalent 
depression. 

Hence, while a man of real virility may be 
said to throw out his search-light in all directions, 
like our great ironclads, woman, on the contrary, 
is the recipient of emotion, which she stores, and 
transforms, and endues with the elements of life 
in which it is lacking. She mingles a spiritual 
element with a love that would otherwise be sen- 
sual, and with the love of danger a love for higher 
things. 

And thus this feminine art, which appears at 



THE HIGH CROSS 153 

first sight all compact of peace and joy, turns out 
to be much deeper — the exercise of self-sacrifice 
and active goodness. Joys are not precluded, but 
at the cost of what an absolute yielding of self ! 
This work of human redemption, which consists in 
taking upon oneself, and bearing as a sacred trust, 
the joys and woes of others, seems to be in reality 
a sort of crucifixion. 

Thinking of all it implies, one fancies one sees, 
on the summit of a precipitous mountain, a gigantic 
cross. The shaft is made of the rough wood of 
the virile mind ; upon it is stretched the quivering 
flesh of woman ; all that remains is to inscribe 
above it " Behold our queen," and to pierce her 
heart. Then it may be said that what woman 
wills, God also wills. 

I am aware that women may possibly desire 
rather to live for themselves, and that the awful 
grandeur of such a sacrifice affrights them. But 
they will never succeed in evading it ; they needs 
must submit to it ; were they to flee they would 
meet the Lord : " Lord, whither goest thou ? Quo 
vadis ? " And the Lord would make answer : " To 
the place ye are deserting ! " 

That is the law ; and one can only recommend 
them to read the apologue of Jonah, so well re- 
lated by Tolstoy : — 

"The prophet Jonah, wishing to remain upright 



154 THE ART OF LIFE 

and virtuous, withdraws himself from the com- 
panionship of wicked men. But God shows him 
that his duty as a prophet is to communicate to 
the perverse and foolish his knowledge of the 
truth, and so he ought not to shun these men, but 
rather to live in fellowship with them. Jonah, 
disgusted with the depravity of the inhabitants of 
Nineveh, flees from their city. But it is in vain 
that he shirks his vocation. By the agency of the 
whale God brings him back to Nineveh, and the 
will of God is accomplished : the Ninevites accept 
the law of God at the preaching of Jonah, and lead 
a better life. Far from rejoicing at having been 
made the instrument of God's will, Jonah waxes 
sullen, jealous of God's mercy towards the Nine- 
vites, as though he would arrogate to himself alone 
the exercise of reason and goodness. He goes 
away out into the desert, and plunging into self- 
commiseration of his lot, hurls his reproaches 
against the Almighty. And then he sees, in the 
space of one night, a gourd springing up to shield 
him from the sun ; the following night it withers 
away. Smitten by the heat, Jonah reproaches God 
still more bitterly for allowing the gourd that was 
so dear to him to perish. Then said the Lord : 
'Thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which 
thou hast not laboured, neither madest it grow ; 
which came up in a night and perished in a night : 



THE HIGH CROSS 155 

and should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, 
wherein are more than sixscore persons that can- 
not discern between their right hand and their 
left hand, and also much cattle ? ' Thy knowledge 
of the truth was only necessary that thou mightest 
impart it to those who knew it not." 1 

1 Tolstoy, My Religion. 



PART THE THIRD 
THE FLOWER OF LIFE 



CHAPTER THE FIRST 

WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 

" One might sum up the role of women in 
two articles : to console the suffering, to aid 
the promising. They might well learn from 
youth up, if not to encourage, at any rate not 
to extinguish." — Madame - — (a private 
letter). 

The spiritual maternity should have for its first 
effect the creation of better women. Some people 
are apt to believe that a woman can be improvised, 
and that her mission implies no preparation ; others 
think that it is all-sufficient to give a girl a respect- 
able governess. In reality, a woman can only form 
herself by living in close fellowship with another 
woman, who is, or becomes, her mother. 

This is so much a part of the order of things 
that advantages accrue to both sides. St. Paul 
says somewhere that women are saved by their 
children ; at all events, they are formed by them. 
For the mother, as for the daughter, the training of 
the child is the art of life in miniature ; and when 
a Madame Necker, a Madame Roland, a Madame 
Necker de Saussure favour us in their letters with 



160 THE ART OF LIFE 

accounts of the early days of their daughters — 
their tremors, and wiles, and playthings — their 
stories are more delightful than any novel. Madame 
d'Epinay, woman of the world as she was, gave 
the education of her daughter the first place in 
that herbal of her life, which she published under 
the title Mes moments henreux. 

The method is a simple one. It consists essen- 
tially in respecting the freedom of the girls ; aye, 
in launching them out into life without undertaking 
to repair any damage — in simply placing them in 
a good medium, favourable to a healthy develop- 
ment : the best education is to help them to be 
good and happy. Women, whatever the world 
may say, stand in just as much need as men, or 
even more, of probity, of a due sense of responsi- 
bility — in short, of all that we mean by i character ' ; 
sometimes they are brought up on a restrictive 
and passive method because we fancy we are assur- 
ing peaceable and virtuous households by pro- 
ducing submissive or at least insignificant women. 
But it is of no use then deploring their insignifi- 
cance, and obviously you cannot expect much 
from women if you have only taught them (adopt- 
ing Fenelon's happy phrase) to walk with crutches. 

So far back as the seventeenth century, a 
foreigner, the Princess Palatine, roundly charged 
French education with producing " nothing but 



WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 161 

coquettes or bigots." Still, Madame de Mainte- 
non (who was not revolutionary, nor even Ameri- 
can, in her notions) insisted on the children 
of Saint-Cyr living " under an open sky," and 
she allowed them to go into the village to see 
the poor and the sick— in a word, to serve an 
apprenticeship to life. 

Is it too much to recommend this system in 
place of that consisting in bringing up all children 
in one glass-house ? 

Do you wish to make brave-hearted women — 
a sort of light cavalry of life ? Then show them 
life early. Don't you think that if boys were 
brought up with dolls and nurse-girls they too 
would have many pettinesses, and hypocrisies, and 
pusillanimities ? Frankness, simplicity, silence, 
love of work, modesty, gentleness, patience, 
soberness of judgment — these are the fundamental 
virtues to be fostered in women. You must 
allow 7 simplicity in speech, naturalness in be- 
haviour (even with a spice of petulance), no 
strait-lacing of soul or body (I continue to shelter 
myself behind the authority of eminent women, 
notably Madame de Maintenon) : fresh air, exercise, 
movement, ample dresses, hard beds, cold water 
all the year round ! And, more than all, pre- 
serve the spirit of originality. Routine is the 
great enemy to be feared, because idleness and 



162 THE ART OF LIFE 

weakness so easily accommodate themselves to it. 
Habit is certainly a good thing : a nerve that has 
once conveyed a sensation is better able to 
recognise and convey it again. But, from the 
intellectual standpoint, habit must not be over- 
rated. 

You cannot make bricks without straw: but 
the volubility of little girls, their wealth of move- 
ment, their vivacity and excitability, are somewhat 
over-abundant materials. Time, that great master, 
will be able to tame them ; let us not interfere 
too much with them, and especially let us beware 
of slackening any chord of enthusiasm. It is im- 
possible to accumulate too plentiful a store of 
youthfulness and freshness. 

Nor should we fear to speak of the heart, to 
honour it, to acknowledge it as a woman's domi- 
nant force, since this is the truth : it is quite 
enough to hint at the claims of reason ; and, if 
we have cause to fear a weediness of imagination, 
to bring frankly before them the facts of existence. 

To learn a little cooking, something of law 
(along with a horror of chicane and a wholesome 
distrust of the courts), something of hygiene and 
botany, and even of medicine for women and 
children : such forms an excellent complement 
of the poetic and the ideal. " Do you want to 
bring up a crowd of female apothecaries, then " ? 



WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 163 

some one will say. Well, why not, if by means 
of some accomplishments of this kind a woman 
can diminish the hardships of her own private 
life, or at any rate multiply her charity ? Such 
folk would be vastly astonished if we ventured 
to draw up here a list of the great women-apothe- 
caries of the past : Anne de Beaujeu, Diane de 
Poitiers, Madame Necker, and a thousand more. 
In America, biology has an important place in 
the education of women ; and charming women 
are to be found banding themselves together in 
the service of the sick. Let me mention Madame 
de Maintenon once more in this connection, and 
remark that she intrusted to the elder of her 
pupils the care of the little ones, as well as various 
duties of the home. 

It will be obvious, however, that we should not 
desire to urge women to study the exact sciences : 
that is not their forte, even in an elementary 
sense ; and it would be just as harmful to quench 
their sensibility in a flood of so-called technical 
knowledge, as it is to ruin the intelligence of 
young men therein. All that we advocate is 
some few notions, absolutely practical in charac- 
ter, useful, of assured application, and at the same 
time likely to serve as a solid counterpoise to the 
forces of enthusiasm. 

Moreover, all that we have said about the value 



1 64 THE ART OF LIFE 

of the aesthetic environment applies essentially to 
the education of girls. It is a matter of the first 
importance to have an eye to the beauty of the 
objects surrounding them or used by them, to 
teach them to see the beautiful side of every- 
thing, to encourage travel ; to teach them history 
with the same purpose in view, in other words, 
not to be content with showing them this or 
that historical monument, or drumming into them 
dates and terminology, but to lead them gently 
into the flower-gardens of nature or ideas, for at 
bottom the best philosophy in such cases is a 
philosophy of travel and history : by such means 
as these do we learn to compare and to judge. 

Go to the sea : the water is so fair and kind a 
counsellor. The sea enters very largely into the 
Gospel history, and the first disciples were chosen 
from among the fishers. Go and see a fine church, 
a grand palace, a picture gallery : these are the 
joys of the human intelligence ; with them you 
live in the midst of all the noblest fruits the past 
and the present have produced, among things 
eternally beautiful. To see man, the creature 
of a day, is a much less urgent matter. 

Intelligent girls may proceed from this experi- 
mental philosophy of aestheticism to theories of 
aesthetics or psychology. 

Theology is a stern science. But a practical 



WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 165 

religion as formulated by the Catechism, and 
healthy religious aims and ideals, nourished by 
the direct reading of the Scriptures, form the 
corner-stone of every system of feminine educa- 
tion. Women would be good for nothing — would 
have neither a part to play nor a mission to fulfil, 
without a spiritual faith. The art of life consists 
precisely in rising superior to matter. Women 
can never arm themselves too thoroughly with 
the Christian faith ; it is their palladium ; never 
can they too thoroughly equip themselves for its 
defence. Does this mean that they should adapt 
themselves to all kinds of wile and trickery ? 
' No/ answer friends of theirs who are above 
suspicion — Vives, Madame de Maintenon, Fene- 
lon : the world asks of them just the reverse. 

For girls, as for boys, education as commonly 
understood is finished at about the age of sixteen 
or seventeen. And then, while the brothers pro- 
ceed to devote themselves to special studies, what 
will the sisters do ? 

Look around for a husband ! Marriage is for 
the most part a question of amour propre ; yet I 
cannot see that it is any more discreditable to a 
woman than to a man to marry late, or even 
not to marry at all. As a matter of fact, all a 
woman's actions, gestures, words, thoughts, con- 
verge upon the one fixed idea — marriage. 



166 THE ART OF LIFE 

That being so, should she prepare for marriage 
as an association of two persons equal though 
different, or as a state of subjection ? The second 
alternative has, in the present state of our manners 
and customs, fallen somewhat into discredit ; in 
former days it was regarded as a dogma. The girl 
of old was brought up in solitude, in a state of 
nature, as St. Thomas of Aquinas put it, and at the 
age of twelve she meekly received from her parents 
her lord and master. An artist of the fifteenth 
century, a man of liberal ideas — Philarete — who 
amused himself by writing a book (still unpub- 
lished) on the symbolism of things, recommended 
that girls should be dressed in green, should not 
be allowed to go out of doors except to church, 
should be taught a little music and dancing, and 
provided with a dowry at the earliest possible 
moment. 1 

These ideas, which simplify matters exceedingly, 
always find supporters. Some German philo- 
sophers in particular, persuaded of the inaneness of 
feminine culture, even in an aesthetic direction, are 
foremost in professing that women had better not 
bother their heads with it. 

But in France, tradition gives to women the 
place of honour ; and indeed, among the masses, 
perhaps even elsewhere, the wives are often better 

1 MS. of the Magliabecchiana at Florence. 



WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 167 

bred than their husbands. Among the upper 
classes, the wife in the majority of cases has the 
money, and the liberty resulting from this circum- 
stance, and from our manners, frequently repre- 
sents to many young ladies the principal attraction 
of marriage. 

Well, with such liberty, and the possibility of 
playing an important part, confronting her, it is 
infinitely preferable that a woman should marry 
late rather than soon, and begin her housekeeping 
when her mind is fully matured. This will permit 
her to continue some of her high studies without 
in the least losing sight of the inevitable ' he ' ; and 
if I hesitate to affirm, like Cardinal Bembo, that Latin 
puts the finishing touch to her charms, I cannot at 
the same time bring myself to believe that thought, 
which gives so fair and noble a radiance to some 
men's features, will dull the countenance of a girl. 

For higher study, history, even of the scientific 
order, would in such a case be not unbecoming, 
if only to hold the imagination in due restraint. 
This struck Fenelon at an epoch when the stage 
gave us Le Cidy and when the novels were those 
of Mademoiselle de Scudery. Likewise the study of 
psychology and ethics might be profitably pursued ; 
for, after all, until we revert to barbarism, moral 
reflection is bound to remain of some account. 
But here it is otherwise with women than with 



168 THE ART OF LIFE 

men. These serious questions are for women a 
luxury, and it is the matters seemingly ornamental 
that are serious for them. In a word, they will do 
well to develop above all their aesthetic education 
in every possible way ; for instance, to own a small 
library composed of those choice and beautiful 
books of which to read one passage is sufficient 
to sweeten the day — the New Testament, the 
Imitation of Christ, Racine, Lamartine, Corneille, 
Tolstoy's War and Peace, some portions of the 
Paroles d'un Croyant of Lamennais, &c. 

And is not this also the moment to develop the 
art of talking ? This recommendation will raise 
a smile ; the idea of teaching girls to chatter ! 
Well, that was what was done at Saint-Cyr, where 
Madame de Maintenon herself used to superintend 
the conversation lesson. Ladies in olden days 
were recommended to study the art of talk in all 
its varieties, even for speaking to their servants. 
This discipline was looked upon, first of all, as an 
apprenticeship to good breeding, and secondly as 
a precaution against dulness and insipidity, which 
was regarded as a veritable vice. Finally, odd as 
it may appear, it was thought that learning to speak 
was also learning to be silent. You wish to avoid 
tittle-tattle ? then talk ; if you can talk, you will be 
able on occasion to spend a whole day in solitude 
and silence. 



WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 169 

This apprenticeship to conversation involves 
other arts, of which, indeed, it is the synthesis and 
crown. Conversation alone accustoms a woman to 
discern the real value of men, to know how to deal 
with them, how to exercise a serious influence upon 
them : conversation brings out something more 
than conventional opinion, and exposes mere sur- 
face convictions donned for the occasion. Nay 
more, it has a singularly beneficial effect on the 
person who speaks, for there is no means so suc- 
cessful for self-persuasion as the attempt to persuade 
other people. 

Lastly, is it our business to develop and guide a 
young girl's capacity for love ? Surely it is. Why 
should not sensibility spread out its broad wings ? 
Ah ! we should hear much less of various ailments 
and exhausted vitalities did we remember the ad- 
mirable saying of Balzac: "To these creatures of 
fire, living is feeling. When once feeling ceases, 
they are dead." Yes, I would with discretion 
advocate the claims of passion before them — which 
does not mean novels or flightiness. This is the 
time, if we choose to make it so, for high and 
beautiful passions. 

When a girl has a mother, and is accustomed 
to feel with her; when the mother is not afraid 
to share the joys, hopes, and sorrows of her 
daughter, from the day when her doll is broken ; 



170 THE ART OF LIFE 

the conditions exist for the birth and the develop- 
ment of an admirable sympathy, which is one of 
the finest passions in the world. 

A passion of this kind very quickly discovers itself 
in the daughter by an engaging simplicity and 
openness and courtesy, a quiet cheerfulness, and 
an infectious gaiety ; and the mother, reading this 
limpid heart, learns also to read her own heart, and 
to discover hidden springs of feeling there. 

Accomplishments, games, open-air exercises are 
in their right place during this period of life, which 
ought to be above all a period of light-hearted 
merriment. 

Physicians like Dr. de Fleury wish us to return 
to the beautiful rhythmic dances in the open air so 
high in favour in days of antiquity and during the 
Renaissance, and which are still vaguely reflected in 
certain round dances among the Bretons. I am 
not very sanguine as to the fulfilment of this pious 
aspiration. 

You know the dances I mean, depicted on so 
many bas-reliefs and pictures and tapestries, sung 
by poets, celebrated in a hundred ways. To render 
the sinews pliant and elastic seems their whole 
intention. Girls and youths clasp hands in un- 
ruffled modesty, with never a sign of physical or 
moral excitement. On a green lawn under a warm 
sky, amidst the odours of pines and rose-trees, 



WOMEN MUST LEARN THEIR ART 171 

fanned by the soft breath of Nature, the dancers, 
swinging garlands of flowers and singing the while, 
move their whole bodies in a rhythm of incom- 
parable charm. From time to time the orchestra 
breaks in upon their song with a light and tripping 
strain. 1 In this graceful exercise they sought and 
found the perfect flower of human beauty, unfold- 
ing as roses bloom. True, their performance was 
merely sensuous, of all modes of human converse 
the least ; but it was dancing raised to the highest 
pitch of perfection, dancing to which it were im- 
possible to impart more charm or grace. That, 
assuredly, might still deserve to be called an art, a 
name which I am not sure is merited by the noisy 
frolicking and hustling seen in certain stuffy draw- 
ing-rooms to-day. 

1 Memoir of Philarete, chap, xvi., towards the end. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND 

MARRIED LIFE 

"By sin man lost happiness, but not the 
means of recovering it. 

"God will wipe away all the tears of His 
saints." — St. Augustine. 

The second maternity, at once the more important 
and the more difficult, is this : A woman must be 
the mother of her husband, and afterwards of her 
sons. 

Some one will protest : " How very far we are 
from that condition ! What a paradox ! " By no 
means. So far as the sons are concerned, nothing 
could be clearer : in the animal kingdom the 
mother's love is of higher quality than the father's ; 
and among human kind, motherhood is the palpable 
and indisputable family bond. But even in regard 
to the husband, — if we will but pause for a moment 
to consider this great question of marriage, always 
a fruitful subject of discussion, and in so doing 
banish selfish considerations, ignore base passions, 
and shut our ears to the flood of special pleadings, 
— no one will deny, I think, that a man's existence is 
only completed when a woman links herself to him 



MARRIED LIFE 173 

with the seriousness, the readiness to meet whatever 
the future may bring, and the moral sincerity, which 
marriage implies. 

You argue : " How can a woman honour mar- 
riage to this extent ? The marriage state is based 
on a physical and universal fact, which , has no 
great nobility in itself, and which, truth to tell, 
demands neither intelligence nor sensibility. Even 
the bird of prey has a nest, the tiger loves. The 
sparrows know nothing of functionaries or mem- 
bers of Parliament, but the most insignificant of 
the sparrows espouses a mate, at any rate pro- 
visionally. We women do likewise, with the addi- 
tion of the rational and becoming idea of an 
association of interests. Marriage stands for the 
sum and crown of the material life : thank God, 
it includes no slight admixture of the higher mate- 
rialities — of reason, and calculation, and personal 
interest. We don't merely marry a man : if my 
husband, such as he is (I love him !), had neither 
his income nor his intelligence, nor a thousand 
other things that I associate with him, I should 
never have said 'Yes.' In a marriage seriously 
entered into, one attaches much more importance 
to moral qualities, intelligence, character, than to 
love. Such a marriage is a piece of solid masonry, 
with foundations deep on the bedrock of the use- 
ful, the true, the moral ; and really it would be 



174 THE ART OF LIFE 

hardly judicious, and not very tempting perhaps, 
to start with a wholly physical fascination. Be- 
sides, women are not so sensual, nor even so 
sentimental, as some people are pleased to imagine ; 
they are actuated for the most part by calculations 
of personal interest or vanity, and the woman 
who was neither vain nor solicitous about herself 
would never love anybody. And as for men, 
they don't marry like schoolboys. If a woman 
esteems her husband, it is because he has not 
merely wedded a pretty woman, a rare toy, a five- 
minutes plaything : the five minutes are to last a 
lifetime — and so is the wife." 

Unquestionably, a man's whole existence is 
coloured by his home life : it is here that the law 
of the environment shows itself more especially 
in operation. The wife is often the cashier, the 
ruling spirit of the household, and from this arises 
the French genius for economy. 

So marriage tends more and more to become a 
contract. We have given up the delightful old 
custom of formal betrothals, which endued reali- 
ties with so marvellous a fragrance. We prefer, 
as soon as a match is made, to run for the parson 
and clerk ; every one is in a terrible hurry to 'get 
it over,' for the proof of the pudding is in the 
eating. And then ! 

And so folks marry as reasonable beings, and 



MARRIED LIFE 175 

do well ; but carried to extremes the system results 
in people not marrying at all, or, at any rate, not 
if they can help it. 

For if marriage is a mere matter of utility, neither 
more nor less, a poor man will obviously suffer 
himself to be tempted when he sees a chance of 
fetching his price ; while it is equally obvious that 
a rich man is in no hurry. Marriage and paternity 
are expensive ; it was not yesterday the Epicureans 
discovered that love brings trouble into a man's 
life, and that the wise man does well to eschew it. 

To follow another line of thought, there are 
some men, elect spirits, who live on ideas, intel- 
lectual work, ideals ; and these, not being open to 
considerations of personal interest, shrink from 
the marriage bond as too material. Mystics have 
handed down through the ages the praise of vir- 
ginity and celibacy — one eternal paraphrase of the 
famous axiom of St. Paul : " Both he that giveth 
his own virgin in marriage doeth well ; and he 
that giveth her not in marriage shall do better." 

" I laud wedlock," said St. Jerome, " because it 
engenders virgins : I draw a pearl out of an 
oyster." 

" Nothing debases a man," said St. Augustine, 
" like the caresses of a woman." 

"'Tis vices that people the earth, and virginity 
that peoples heaven," wrote St. Thomas of Aquinas 



176 THE ART OF LIFE 

In our own time, Lacordaire, for all his eminently 
ardent and sympathetic heart, took on himself the 
defence of men who think marriage beneath them. 
" Scarcely is he become a man, nay, even before," 
he writes, " the son of the most loving mother 
yearns to separate from her. . . . He will at any 
rate find that liberty of choice which is one of 
the conditions of love ? Far from it. A thousand 
imperious circumstances mark out for a man 
the companion of his life, and he advances to 
the altar, a victim crowned with cankered roses, 
to promise everything, and to give very little. . . . 
Conjugal love, the strongest of all loves while it 
lasts, is vitiated by a flaw arising from its very 
ardour : the senses are not alien thereto." 

Lacordaire went even further. He wrote : 
"There are mothers who love their sons, and 
husbands who love their wives ; these are bonds 
of imperfection, but they exist." 

And yet he was a sentimentalist : his visions 
were filled with a life into which sentiment largely 
entered ; but to him, marriage did not rise above 
self-interest and prudential considerations, — the 
conception we have of it to-day. 

Though this eulogy of virginity finds little re- 
sponse in current opinion and ideals, yet many 
women will understand it. It is not always physi- 
cal subjection that tempts them ; on this matter 



MARRIED LIFE 177 

St. Augustine said grimly that wives are the bond- 
servants of their husbands, and the same attitude 
explains the fact that for ages widows with a turn 
for remarriage have been mercilessly assailed with 
epigrams and lampoons. 

If marriage is to attain the supreme heights 
of its possibilities, a deep and earnest affection 
must be developed. " A hand greater than man's 
is ever at work in the family," as M. Charles 
Wagner admirably says. Happy are the wives 
who accomplish their life in a song of rejoicing 
and praise ! But how many there are, of the 
purest and most refined, who bear with them 
throughout their life a nameless disquietude of 
soul ! This arises from a too close familiarity 
with materialities. The husband is quite uncon- 
scious of it. On the contrary, he thinks himself 
worthy of all praise. What more is wanted of 
him ? 

What is wanted, replies the eminent American 
preacher, Father Hecker, is the union of souls, 
conjoined for an end worthy of them. Union of 
bodies? — no: union of interests? — no! This 
would mean to clip one's wings too sadly, to nar- 
row one's horizon. The family ought not to be 
regarded as merely a material bond : marriage is 
the art of loving in common the same beings, 

the same things, the same places, of cherishing 

M 



178 THE ART OF LIFE 

common memories, of suffering together, hoping 
together, praying together. Self-interest is a very 
coarse and very brittle cement, likely to crumble 
away and ruin the edifice. Love alone holds all 
things together. 

But the mystics say that we shall only love with 
a real and tranquil love in Paradise, where fleshly 
ties will have vanished, where there will be no 
more birth, no more death — where women will be 
angels, and Love will be released from the bonds 
of Time. 1 

St. Augustine meets this point with a theory 
which we beg leave to state in a few words, for 
these old Fathers of the Church are not known so 
well as they ought to be : none of our novelists 
is richer in suggestion. 

We have, he says, our conception of happiness 
and our thirst for happiness because we vaguely 
remember a lost paradise, which our instincts 
prompt us all to regain. 

The first paradise gave harbourage to a man 
and a woman, beautiful in body, pure in heart, 
never reasoning, but loving each other, and having 
nothing to fill their minds but beauty and love. 

On the day when this man and woman were 
married (if we may use the term), when they con- 

1 St. Augustine : cf. St. Luke xx. 34, 35 ; St. Matthew xxii. 32 ; 
St. Mark xii. 27. 



MARRIED LIFE 179 

traded themselves together according to the flesh, 
nothing was left to them but to die — their happi- 
ness was at end — and to give birth to other beings. 
Birth was the ransom from death. You recognise 
here the verse in the Miserere: " In sin did my 
mother conceive me." We were born, and we 
remain, perishable beings, flung into the midst of 
struggle, toil, pain, disease. 

And thus, sorrows, toils, struggles are transitory 
things ; and our souls, stamped with the seal of 
Paradise, tend always to return towards the state 
of primal happiness : towards ideal love, virginity, 
and beauty. The body has its share in this joy ; 
the body also is beautiful, and needs must be 
glorified, provided it remains in subjection to the 
soul. It is not to be wholly neglected, and we 
need suffer no pang of conscience if we utilise it 
normally, so long as we look to a noble aim. Nor 
is there any reason to cramp the soul, to compress 
it, so to speak, in a vice, and to fancy ourselves 
to be more holy because we sow our own life 
with thorns, — and sometimes the lives of others 
also, for we are almost always answerable for 
some one's happiness. 

Struggle and trial, then, are to be endured as 
the crosses of life, not as its substance. What 
seems to us at the present time to be the one thing 
needful will pass away. We were born, in reality, 



180 THE ART OF LIFE 

for beauty and for love ; and these will not pass 
away. Everything that raises us to them is a fore- 
taste of Paradise, and shall endure. This is the 
divine reality. Thus the hand can, nay, must, 
stretch forth towards beauty ; the eyes can feast 
on it, the lips love it : Beauty may be proud of 
herself, provided always that the soul holds sway. 
The body is the portal of Love, and the soul its 
sanctuary. Hence it is that marriage leads us to 
a higher life. It is for us to enter into love. The 
rarest natures make direct and easy entrance, 
without the aid of any carnal bond ; but the 
majority of us pursue the well-worn track, the 
flesh our starting-point, the spirit our distant goal. 

For it is the characteristic of love to abandon 
self, to forget itself in the loved one. " If you enter 
not into your beloved, your love is still but external ; 
you have nothing of love's penetrating power ; you 
languish, remaining in the outer courts ; you are 
sundered from him you love, and are not one, heart 
and soul, with him " ; 1 a statement in which we 
catch tones of the Fathers of the Church. 

In this matter, then, art consists in gathering 
from marriage all possible benefit ; and the first 
point is to beware of abusing it. 2 There are good 

1 Richard, quoted by St. Bonaventure, The Seven Roads to Eternity. 

2 " If you believe it possible to be happy with your wife," wrote 
Madame de Maintenon to her brother, " take care to keep yourself in 
hand and not get tired of her ; take care not to disgust her with 



MARRIED LIFE 181 

marriages, excellent marriages, but none ideal. 
And so it is a great pity to take life too seriously, 
as many good women do : a certain lightness of 
hand is needed, a touch of coquetry, the power 
to awaken desire, to make herself the object of 
thought, — not to make herself cheap. In this 
direction, serious occupations render immense 
service ; very silly and very short-sighted are those 
young wives who pout at their husband's ambitions, 
sulk at having to live where his work is, and have 
a horror of hours of solitude ; who act as a drag 
instead of a stimulus, and reduce him to a life of 
hunting, smoking, racing, vacuity. If in so doing 
they fancy they are strengthening their hold, they 
make a terrible mistake ; they succeed only in 
annihilating or wearing out the man. 

Woman holds the key of life. If she is a good 
housekeeper, and imparts to husband and sons her 
love for beautiful things, for enthusiasm and de- 
votion and fame, she will be only the better loved. 
Let her be careful of her person and her time ; the 
more one does, the more one has leisure to do. 

These ideas will not, I know, have the honour of 
approving themselves to all ladies. With some 

indelicacies which are bound to make an impression, and prevent her 
also from showing any such before you. . . . You have two rooms 
excellently suited for that, at Cognac. Let people say what they 
will : the man who cannot find happiness is a simpleton ; and you 
must take the easiest road." 



182 THE ART OF LIFE 

of them, flightiness of conduct serves to cloak 
emptiness of mind or an indolence from which they 
think it impossible to escape. Or some, perhaps, 
idolising their husband, magnify his good qualities 
to themselves — not a very serious blunder, that ; or 
else they give him the cold shoulder, and then 
forsooth are heard complaining that their hus- 
band " has not formed them." But why have they 
not formed themselves ? This, they fancy, would 
involve deep study, earnest inquiry, thought ; 
believe me, nothing of the kind ; it is enough to 
embody love and devotion in their own homes, to 
diffuse around them cheerfulness and joy and 
graciousness, to be what the Son of Sirach calls 
" the light of the house " ; : and no woman alive 
but has intelligence enough for that. 

Sometimes people are amazed at the almost 
religious veneration that some men show for their 
wives. Such men are the sons of their mothers ; it 
is clear that a certain well-remembered graciousness 
and loving-kindness has never been displaced in 
their hearts. For the opinion we have of women 
depends absolutely on our own individual recollec- 
tions of them. If we have despised them, held 
them cheap, we judge them contemptible beings. 

1 ["As the sun ariseth in the highest places of the Lord, so is the 
beauty of a good wife in the ordering of a man's house. As the lamp 
that shineth upon the holy candlestick, so is the beauty of the face in 
ripe age." — Ecchsiasticus xxvi. 6.] 



MARRIED LIFE 183 

But if we have known great women ; if, above all, 
we have been reared beneath their shadow or have 
lived in intimacy with them, we have a high ideal 
of womanhood, as an indispensable influence in the 
world. Christ, in the midst of the company at 
Cana, said to His mother : " What are this water 
and this wine to us ? Quid mihi et tibi ? " — a 
beautiful utterance, the seal of two souls welded 
into one : quid mihi et tibi ? — " to us two ! " J 

Nor will any eloquence match the first words of 
Lamartine, in the speech he made on being received 
into the Academy : " My happiness ! At that time 
I was happy ! . . . All my joys — my intellectual 
joys, my joy in family and fatherland — were 
doubled ! They were reflected in another heart. 
That time is gone. None of the days in a long life 
can restore to a man what is reft from him by that 
fatal day when he reads in the eyes of his friends 
what no lips dare to utter : ' You have lost 
your mother ! ' " 

And yet no one should count on life. While 
consecrating herself wholly to the happiness of her 
dear ones, a woman would be wrong to make their 
life the pedestal of her own happiness. For husband, 
sons, daughters, unnumbered ills lie greedily in 

1 [The author quotes from the Vulgate version of St. John ii. 4, and 
his translation differs widely from ours, removing indeed from the 
sentence that accent of rebuke which has been so variously accounted 
for by our commentators.] 



1 84 THE ART OF LIFE 

wait. They may succumb to them, or be griev- 
ously hurt by them ; they may part from you, or 
live far away. What, O woman's heart, would 
befall thee if thou hadst set upon them all thy joy ! 
One of old said these words, awful in their pro- 
fundity : " He that loveth father or mother more than 
Me is not worthy of Me." It was told the Christ, 
" Behold, Thy mother and brethren are without, 
desiring to speak with Thee." And He answered, 
" Who is my mother, and who are my brethren ? And 
He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples 
and said : Behold my mother and my brethren." 
In other words, He tells us to sip the cream of this 
present life, not to drain it to the dregs. Some few 
women, possibly, believe too much in marriage ; 
others, mayhap, do not believe in it enough ; life 
must not be lived entirely indoors or entirely 
out. Our hearts are woven of a tissue noble 
enough for all great ideas and honourable affections 
to find a place therein. 

In a word, then, true marriage is an association 
of like tastes and unlike characters. Your body, 
Madam, is your husband's : his soul belongs per- 
force to you. 

I am reminded of the faggots made by the 
countryfolk in our woods ; they systematically 
add charm to the oaken twigs by slipping in 
here and there among them sprigs of thorn. 



MARRIED LIFE 185 

The bundle is pleasing to the eye, and makes 
a good fire. 

But if you aimed at uniting discrepant things — 
a jaded man with a girl of fresh young soul, a toil- 
worn man with a woman faded by indolence, — you 
would need a link of iron. 



CHAPTER THE THIRD 

THE NECESSARY AFFECTIONS 

" Woe to him that is alone when he falleth, 
for he hath not another to help him up." — 

ECCLESIASTES iv. IO. 

I. The Family. 

Yet other relationships are necessarily born of 
the mechanical and physical part of life ; art 
consists here in winning from them what may be 
called the necessary affections, since they result 
from a material fact — from an act of reason, not 
an act of free will. Freedom to choose and 
passion both have no part in them : at the same 
time, this class of affections has for its support at 
any rate natural similarities of tastes, a presump- 
tive love for the same things. 

Such is what we call family feeling, a somewhat 
rare thing to-day : it presupposes a number of 
persons brought up together, or trained in the 
same ideas, with common interests or a common 
tradition. A united family may be compared to 
the crew of a ship. 

The family affections present on analysis the 

?86 



THE NECESSARY AFFECTIONS 187 

same mixed elements as marriage. You find at 
the outset a rational attachment, altogether diffe- 
rent from, indeed opposed to, love properly so 
called — the law justly forbids marriage with a half- 
sister. On this rational attachment, again, is super- 
imposed a certain solidarity of material interests, 
which in some cases may extend beyond blood 
relations and embrace a body of clients similar to 
the ancient gens. 

In the pagan days of serfdom, slaves formed part 
of the familia : their ashes were mingled with the 
remains of their masters in the family colum- 
barium. In the Middle Ages, again, the i house' 
might have been included among the necessary 
affections ; it comprised personages held in high 
respect, and, indeed, not separated by any wide 
social gap from the lord, for it was an honour to 
princesses themselves to begin life with service. 
This condition of things furthered the reinforce- 
ment of the material bond by a moral bond that 
was often much stronger : to take into one's ser- 
vice persons chosen from a limited and select class, 
to associate them with one's life, to permit them to 
marry, to recognise their children and help to 
educate them, were tasks demanding, along with 
a patriarchal simplicity, a good deal of time, money, 
and affection. All this is out of date now. The 
State is the only master we love to serve, because 



188 THE ART OF LIFE 

we can serve without loving. The labourer and 
the valet are electors, kings in the land, and con- 
sequently more than our equals — our masters ; and 
we take them and leave them, keep them, dismiss 
them. They work, they steal, they waste their time 
and ours. The heart is non-existent here : we have 
shown it the door. 

On the other hand, I should be disposed to class 
among the family affections what may be called 
the affections of social necessity, such as our rela- 
tions with neighbours or colleagues : in course of 
time these become a matter of habit, and deserve 
the ' family' designation. Similarities in interests 
and reminiscences, reciprocity of tastes, exchange 
of ideas, come in course of time to create affec- 
tions of a very real and choice and stable kind ; 
but even without going so far as that, after long 
years of intimacy with a country neighbour, you 
do feel much more closely related to him than 
to certain relatives by blood. The result is a phe- 
nomenon which may be called a il kinship by the 
soil," which, as well as family affection properly so 
called, forms an element in the idea of patriotism. 

Here too I shall class all the mixed relationships, 
that is, those that are in part obligatory and in part 
free, but in which obligation is always predomi- 
nant : for instance, one's relations with a parson or 
a doctor, a lawyer or a magistrate. The resulting 



THE NECESSARY AFFECTIONS 189 

affections are of a highly complex and variable 
nature. In these matters men deal with one 
another on a certain footing of equality or friend- 
liness j but women habitually place themselves on 
a footing of inferiority : they form an almost super- 
stitious idea of the man they assume to be superior 
and of some use in the world. Some in conse- 
quence prefer to have recourse to a nameless and 
obscure individual, whom they may never meet 
again, and who will remain a mere speck in their 
life, with which they have no further concern. 

To others, on the contrary, their parson or 
doctor is the friend of friends, and, in fact, their 
only one. Any other friendship would perhaps 
bring a blush to the cheek ; but this one is sanc- 
tioned by custom, and provokes no comment. 

In such cases the woman, naturally, exercises no 
influence ; it is she who is influenced ; hence the 
social influence of doctors is greater than the in- 
fluence of husbands. Many a husband has so 
much to attend to, is so terribly busy ! He gets 
no fee for attending to his wife ! 

1 1 . The Fatherland. 

The word 'fatherland' touches the heart of 

every woman to the quick. But what does the 

word represent ? To most men it means simply 

the nation to which they belong, that is, according 



190 THE ART OF LIFE 

to the school-books, a race, a speech, a geograph- 
ical configuration, a community of interests, or a 
custom, a tradition. 

Certainly, these material elements contribute to 
the idea of one's fatherland ; but they are not 
sufficient to explain it. If all that were needed 
was the fulfilment of one of these conditions, 
would France be a fatherland ? No : Alsace never 
spoke French. Distillers and teetotallers will never 
have the same interests ; and though patriotism is 
most easily realised in a small country, we have 
seen in the past, in the Italian republics, how much 
the patriotic idea formed on economic principles 
was worth : the most rational of them accepted a 
foreign despot to rule their state for a year or two, 
at the point of the sword. 

The idea of ' fatherland' is like the idea of 
' family'; based on material ties and practical 
measures for self-preservation, it requires to be 
cemented by a special, almost an abstract, passion. 
The fatherland is a communion in love for the 
same things, or, as St. Augustine said, " the as- 
sociation of a rational multitude, united in the 
peaceful and common possession of what they 
love." This is why true statesmen attach so much 
importance to the intellectual and moral unity of 
a country. Among us French, in days of old, the 
fatherland was defined as " one king, one God, 



THE NECESSARY AFFECTIONS 191 

one law." In the sixteenth century, when, under 
the cloak of religion, the struggle between collec- 
tivism and individualism began to rend France 
asunder, the necessity for strengthening civil unity 
was felt universally. Catholics, Protestants like 
Calvin and Jean de la Taille, sceptics like Mon- 
taigne, all insisted on unity, even if it had to be 
secured by force. But since those days we have 
come to see that force has no permanent results, 
and that patriotism resides in the unity of love. 
It consists in loving what we have, and we cannot 
be harried into happiness by subjection and cen- 
tralisation. Love of country is nowadays incar- 
nated in love of the flag ; it has all the marks of 
a genuine love ; ideals, disinterestedness, devotion, 
greatest when the political outlook is most gloomy. 
But it must not be forgotten that love of the flag 
is only Love applied, and that is why women are 
so susceptible to it. Castiglione used to say of the 
Duchess of Urbino : "The Duchess seemed to be 
a chain binding us all pleasantly together." That 
is how women understand the fatherland ; they 
love the miniature fatherland of their village be- 
cause belfry, parsonage, and bridge all forge a 
pleasant chain about them ; and they love their 
country in the larger sense, not as a system of 
ethnography or fiscal administration, but because 
all Frenchwomen are in sympathy with them. 



192 THE ART OF LIFE 

Poor trees of Paris, perpetually on your travels, 
transported hither and thither — when I see you 
passing along our quays, going with quivering 
tops from one place to another, how my heart 
bleeds for you ! Ah, ye know nothing of what is 
meant by a homeland ! 



CHAPTER THE FOURTH 

SOCIAL AFFECTION 

" The great take pride in cutting a way 
through a forest, in defending their lands 
with long walls, in gilding their ceilings, 
in deepening rivers by an inch, in stocking 
an orange grove ; but to make one heart 
happy, to fill one soul with joy — ah ! their 
curiosity does not go so far as that." — La 
Bruyere. 

Social affection, again, is a necessary affection. 
Like many animals, men combine to live. The 
acrimonies produced by this enforced intimacy 
are known to every one : it is all very well to say 
that by forming a collection of individual interests 
you create a general interest, that three idiots are 
worth more than one, that a vulgar chromograph 
printed by the million is worth more than the 
single copy of a great master — the mob is not 
satisfied. Poor mob ! it needs the bread of life — 
love. 

Let us create social beauty. The social art is 
the art of love. It is a mistake to believe that the 
masses envy wealth. No ; they revolt against the 

use made of it. Love ideas, and the mob will rise 

193 N 



194 THE ART OF LIFE 

and follow you to death, even though you are rich. 
Love your private interests, and hatred will encom- 
pass you, even though you are poor. 

But here arises the difficulty. I have spoken 
above of the necessary communism of souls. How 
is it to be realised ? We men cannot love other men, 
under pain of crying injustice, madness, disaster. 

Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, and many others, have 
sometimes advocated universal love. As Walt Whit- 
man said, in all seriousness, "We love thus with one 
love the murderous robber and the pious and good 
man." The philosophy of Ravachol himself ! The 
truth is that each of us as we go through the world 
always has some pet aversion, and the honour of 
a good man is that he selects his intimates very 
carefully, shows a preference for good men, scorns 
rogues however successful, respects the police. 
The crowd, taken in the mass, often deserves our 
pity : " I have compassion on the multitude," said 
Christ ; but God alone can embrace the whole 
world as one family : we poor mortals, even 
though our family may not be what men would 
call numerous, find great difficulty, as it is, in 
loving all its members. To love too many would 
be in reality to love no one ; and theories of uni- 
versal love have hitherto had the ill-luck to breed 
civil war, a St. Bartholomew massacre, or the 
horrors of 1793. 



SOCIAL AFFECTION 195 

St. Augustine settles the question by drawing a 
very just distinction : " There are two loves ; social 
love and private love." The second is a love from 
the heart ; the first, alas ! a love from the head. 

How then will women arrive at the communism 
which is the channel of their affections ? By a very 
simple means : by private love, going to the root 
of things. 

The orator, the preacher, the actor, we perceive, 
seek to influence the masses by a sort of electric, 
shall I say robustious excitability ; they fancy they 
have great means at command, and sometimes 
sadly misuse them. But a woman's art, instinct 
with delicacy of feeling and spiritual insight, will 
exercise itself on the elements of social life, not on 
society itself. As always, it clothes the elementary, 
the necessary things in a garment of love. That 
saying of old, " Love one another," is like a strain 
of exquisite music ; it is tantamount to saying, 
" Brighten life for each other, embellish your exist- 
ence." Thus, such art as goes to decorating a 
cottage, enduing it with a little brightness and joy, 
does more towards solving the social problem than 
the art of strewing a speech with flowers of rhetoric 
or of preaching a sermon. Would that our ladies 
would found an association for supplying every 
poor man's room with a pot of geranium ! 

This sort of loving-kindness brings no element of 



196 THE ART OF LIFE 

selfishness into social life : quite the reverse. It 
binds men together : for to love the elements of life, 
what is that but to love poverty and wretchedness, 
all forms of wretchedness, material and moral ? 
Poverty of this vital sort, lives that are from the 
outset but labour and sorrow, you will find every- 
where in plenty. Alas ! they need no searching 
for. Close around us, in very truth, moral indi- 
gences are swarming. And what about the outer 
world, beyond the walls of your garden ? Are 
your walls so high that no cry of anguish strikes 
upon your ear ? Do they stretch up to the heavens, 
whither such cries ascend ? Do you not see the 
multitudes dying, the hearts' blood flowing which 
nothing on earth can stanch ? The supreme joy 
of Christ was to be "with the children of men," 
not because they flocked to hear Him discourse, 
but because, placed, like you, above them, yet near 
to them, He read their hearts like an open book ; 
and with five loaves and two fishes He fed them 
all : " Lo, they continue with Me now three days ! " 
Do you not perceive, dear ladies, for how long, 
for how many ages, the people have continued with 
you ? You wear jewels, 'tis true, and dress beauti- 
fully for your part as actresses on the stage of life ; 
but where are the noble sayings that have fallen 
from your lips — golden words, pearls of salvation ? 
To maintain your rank, encourage trade, and pay 



SOCIAL AFFECTION 197 

your dress bills are most excellent things ; but is 
that all you do towards setting an example ? Will 
that bring about a strengthening of the ties between 
man and man, or sift out the best and worthiest 
from among them ? I know well that the masses 
have defects, and often make but a tardy and 
grudging response to the love shown them. They 
have, in particular, such a mania for equality that 
a monument reared on the soil is to them repre- 
hensible, and the nose of a statue is sinfully 
prominent, a lesson learnt only too well at every 
revolution. At the same time they think, with 
charming good faith, that no intellect can possibly 
be superior to theirs, and that all the benefits of 
civilisation were the joint discovery of every- 
body. To be something in France is open to any 
nobody. 

But, if this is any comfort to you, Madam, 
remember that every new revolution gives birth, 
and will always give birth, to a new aristocracy ; 
for, after all, fig-trees will always bring forth figs, 
asses will always bray. The chief defect of a ruling 
democracy is just the fact that, to escape relapsing 
into barbarism or slavery, it necessitates the crea- 
tion of a new aristocracy. 

Well, all you have to do is to bring about a 
revolution in men's hearts, and you yourselves 
will become this social aristocracy ; you represent 



198 THE ART OF LIFE 

the refinements and the superiorities ; therefore of 
you alone have we need. 

To our jealousies will be opposed your loving- 
kindness — which is love's currency, if not love 
itself. Every one of you can at least act upon hus- 
band, children, friends, acquaintances ; and the 
higher you are in the social scale, the wider does 
this duty of loving your neighbour extend. The 
great ladies of the Renaissance boldly accepted 
what they regarded as a public duty for those in 
their lofty station — the love of humanity. There 
are still Frenchwomen, Englishwomen, American 
women who carry on this tradition, though, to tell 
the truth, they get small thanks for it. 

You will tell me that they are wasting their time, 
and might employ their affections very much better. 
" For my part, I love the poor, of course, and am 
ready to go round collecting (till I become a nuis- 
ance, indeed), to patronise charitable schemes, to 
devote myself heart and soul to opening the purses 
of others, and even (since a social work is in ques- 
tion) to accept the newspapers' statement that 
French society lives for charity, which is true. 
But do you really believe that the poor would not 
rather have a little hard cash than what you call the 
currency of love ? To begin with, one can love 
the poor in general, but I altogether defy you to 
love certain individual poor people — that is, to live 



SOCIAL AFFECTION 199 

in affectionate contact with them. They are so 
aloof, so different, from us, sometimes so degraded. 
And then, out of the immense mass of them, you 
see so few ! And among those you do see, how 
many will you love ? And of those you love, how 
many will accept the gift of your love ? And then, 
what good will it be ? I shall go in for charity, 
then, because it is a moral and religious act ; but 
really, I don't see how, in the social sense of the 
word, it can possibly constitute an aristocracy." 

I will tell you how. 

The distribution of alms is certainly indispensable, 
and, far from objecting to its proper organisation 
and administration, we cannot praise too highly the 
admirable organisations of this kind — such bodies, 
for instance, as the Charity Organisation Society. 

Money carries its value along with it ; all that is 
needed is wisely to distribute it ; but whence it 
comes is a matter of little moment. Yet money is, 
as the jurists say, a fungible thing ; in other words, 
its effect is restricted : by feeding one pauper you 
do not feed two. Love, on the contrary, is by its 
very essence contagious. 

You tell me that you cannot see how a woman 
widens or elevates her character by going and 
chatting with two or three, or let us say ten or 
twenty, poor people — at any rate, how she gains 
more than with ten or twenty of her own friends. 



200 THE ART OF LIFE 

Love is like the little leaven that by and by leaveneth 
the whole lump. If one poor creature loves you, 
ten will love you ; and if you win love for an idea, 
the effect is greater still. Love is a spiritual dyna- 
mite. How much explosive is required for up- 
rooting a mountain ? Ricardo was right when he 
defined it as " the secret force at the root of social 
evolution." 

Especially true is this with us French. Every 
time it has been attempted to make us a rational 
country, the sole result has been to make us a 
people bored. Without passion we accomplish 
nothing, we understand nothing : that is our weak- 
ness and our strength. We venerate the moneyed 
world, then in a sudden frenzy we avoid it, as 
though it were the plague. 

Mammon appears to be throwing a vast upas 
shade upon our springs of life ; but for it we should 
see the rise, it seems, of thousands of Raphaels and 
Napoleons. Of course : societies, like individuals, 
have their natural constitutions — their youth and 
age, their health and diseases. They exalt one man, 
and slay another — capriciously, to all appearance : 
" He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth 
up the beggar from the dunghill." 

Aye, and it is precisely that fact which should 
elevate the role of women. I know well that to sow 
the seed of love, and devotion, and the ideal, is not 



SOCIAL AFFECTION 201 

all ease and pleasantness. To begin with, there is 
a positive physical and moral weariness in loving 
thankless souls. Again, in the strife between 
interest and affection, the heart does not always 
come off victorious. But alas ! the thankless are 
not found only among the poor. And have ye not, 
poor, betrayed, unhappy women — have ye not 
sometimes had to fling yourself at the feet of Him 
who for us became poor, crying, " If Thou hadst 
been here, he would not have died ! " 

Women, then, must not shrink from carrying 
everywhere the love of the beautiful, or from em- 
bodying in themselves the spirit of beauty. From 
the social point of view, that duty may be fulfilled 
in numberless ways. For instance, the custom 
prevalent among Frenchwomen of making up, with 
no small skill, little artistic creations is a practice 
that has, aesthetically, an influence of the highest 
order. One may fairly say that it has given a great 
stimulus to the industries of taste which are the 
special mark of Paris, and constantly sustains 
them. 

Need I say more ? If you live in the country, 
what countless opportunities you have ! — not con- 
fined to giving your rector an occasional invitation 
to dinner, though that is not a bad beginning. But 
might you not take an interest in the neatness and 
cleanliness of the houses, and even exert some 



202 THE ART OF LIFE 

influence on the training of girls in this direc- 
tion ? Unhappily, in our land of so-called uni- 
versal suffrage, the law still refuses to admit women 
to school-boards and charitable committees, despite 
the example of England and America. Still, by 
practical example and wise counsel, a lady can, 
indirectly, do much good. 

Our jealous law, too, though it recognises no 
differences between man and man, refuses to 
women, however nobly gifted, and however closely 
interested in good government, any opportunity of 
influence on governing boards. A town council, 
so far as they are concerned, is res sacra. Happily, 
men are ruled by men, and our deep respect for the 
proceedings of our municipal authorities does not 
blind us to the fact that, even in the most august 
assemblies, the unwieldy organism of two hundred 
persons often reduces itself to a handful, capable of 
admirable work if they feel their responsibility, but 
who, if irresponsible and impelled by passion, are 
sometimes swept off their feet — because a cap- 
tain is bound to follow his troops. As for the mass 
of the electors, I shall not venture to say, with 
Schopenhauer, Nordau, and other pessimists, that 
all they trouble about is " to gorge and glut them- 
selves, propagate, and make their exit." No. But by 
example, by playing upon their snobbish instincts, 
and many elementary means, we still act upon them. 



SOCIAL AFFECTION 203 

If women, then, could induce political orators, 
instead of making grand speeches, simply to repeat 
the saying of St. Francis of Assisi : "The Lord give 
you peace ! " they would have a good chance to 
elevate the masses in some degree ; and then, 
instead of building prisons, we should erect cathe- 
drals, for it is only the spirit of jealousy that pre- 
vents us. 

Meanwhile, form friendships among the people — 
genuine friendships. This will truly elevate you, for 
the true life is not the life of rush and excitement, 
but the inward life, broadened and heightened by 
sociability. And if these humble friends of yours 
are beneath you, and have need of you — how blest 
are ye ! It was this that evoked Christ's smile, and 
the angelic strains that proclaimed around His 
lowly cradle : " Peace on earth, good will toward 
men ! " Yes, you will curtain life's woes with 
loving-kindness and serenity ; your beauty, your 
smiles, your affection will be as dew upon parched 
ground. And especially is it your bounden duty to 
dispense the largesse of conversation. A woman 
has no right to refrain from making herself loved ; 
and in truth, from this standpoint, the social pro- 
blem is a question of the education of women. 



CHAPTER THE FIFTH 

RELATIONSHIPS 

" A faithful friend is a strong defence, and he 
that hath found him hath found a treasure." — 
Ecclesiasticus, vi. 

Relationships properly so called proceed from 
interest and necessity. We desire to have acquain- 
tances, we find them necessary, so as to l see a 
little company/ to have people at our parties and 
our funerals, to feed our vanity, to amuse ourselves, 
to get into a set. Nay more, we form as large a 
circle of acquaintances as possible (this is almost 
an axiom with modern society) ; with the result 
that all trace of art in this matter entirely dis- 
appears, for you can hardly call it ' art ' to leave 
your card on a thousand people to whom you 
are, to say the least, profoundly indifferent. Your 
acquaintanceship only approximates to art when 
it is a nursery of friendships, — in so far as it pro- 
duces a bud of sympathy which will by and by 
blossom into a select and precious affection for 
persons bound to you by no material tie, either 

of blood, interest, or obligation. Thus regarded, 

204 



RELATIONSHIPS 205 

multiplicity can only be injurious. But it presents 
this advantage, to which we must allow full weight — 
that it helps to idealise men, by giving us a kind 
of abstract knowledge of them, almost solely 
through their actions and their ideas — a very 
different thing from knowing the men themselves, 
inasmuch as, from one cause or another, the lives 
of very few men exactly correspond with their 
ideas. 

It will, however, always be necessary to come 
into more or less intimate relationship with one's 
fellow-men. What is the principle of selection to 
be ? On what men can one hope to exercise an 
influence ? Obviously on those who are capable 
of loving the same things as we ourselves do. All 
others are and will remain mere acquaintances. 
The point is, then, to learn how to divine men ; 
it is easier to divine them than to know them. For 
those who possess any strength of character often 
tend to be reserved ; they are like nuts whose 
kernel is sound enough, but concealed under two or 
three husks ; cracking is more effectual than paring. 
As for those who are all on the surface, they are 
the tribe you know least of all : gesture is nothing, 
or at any rate is not to be estimated according 
to its intensity ; a person who kisses your hand is 
doing more than a dog that licks it : the sober, 
measured gesture of an experienced man has 



206 THE ART OF LIFE 

deeper meaning than the antic gesticulations of a 
child. 

We meet in the world, moreover, many people 
of importance who so carefully conceal themselves 
behind their possessions that we are in great straits 
to estimate the men themselves. A name, a fortune, 
an office, are masks almost impenetrable. There 
is nothing for it but to strip them off. ... It is 
certainly a fine thing to be ' your father's son ' ; 
in democratic societies especially, it gives one an 
enviable start in this present life to be born with 
a silver spoon in one's mouth, or to inherit a great 
name. But such title-deeds carry vast obligations 
with them, and to-day, as at all times, the flower 
of a nation, its effective aristocracy, will really 
consist of men of strong and well-developed in- 
dividuality, from whom a multitudinous posterity 
will spring. This does not imply that a man must 
necessarily work with his hands or serve behind 
a counter. But individuality will always retain 
its importance. 

To read a man's character in his face, we may 
rely on his mouth and eyes. Though less mobile 
than those features in women, they will rarely fail 
to furnish useful information. Joy displays itself 
on the lips, making them, so to speak, glow ; desire 
causes them to protrude, like a ripe and ruddy 
fruit ; disdain, essentially a lower emotion, curls 



RELATIONSHIPS 207 

the upper lip and causes the lower to project; 
anxiety draws down the lower lip, with a marked 
tightening at the corners ; while a tinge of scep- 
ticism, or rather a feeling that life has nothing 
more to give, raises the lower lip and makes it 
fold over the upper. 

In regard to the eyes, very few men are clever 
enough to veil them so that women cannot read 
them. 

The habit of carefully analysing in this way 
the people who come before our notice will 
enable us to place them definitively in two cate- 
gories : the weak and the strong. 

The weak form the immense majority; but 
these also fall into two classes : those who are 
downright incumbrances, mischievous and incur- 
able ; and those whose very weakness admits of 
being turned to account. 

How many of the former class we know ! 

The nincompoop, for instance : the fellow with 
stereotyped smile, irrepressibly amiable, but addle- 
pated. He is incurable. 

Then the ' society' pet: the man with intelli- 
gent but stony eye, impertinent at half a chance, 
dangling about fashionable ladies because 'tis 
' smart,' a friend only to the depth of his hide. 
Frankly, Madam, why do you make yourself a 
living sacrifice to these fellows ? 



208 THE ART OF LIFE 

Look at this other candidate for your friendship ; 
sincerity is the last rag of virtue left to him, and 
so he doesn't pose as a lily of the valley. He 
wants to grovel before an idol or to tear it down — 
a good fellow, kind, and even honourable ; and 
what is more, a cheerful soul. But as to believing 
that a woman can exercise any useful influence — 
not he ! the brain has had nothing to do with 
his knowledge of women. Such as he is, women 
have liked him, and will like him still, for many 
women are content with his type, matter of fact, 
transparent, uncomplicated. He never loses him- 
self in a maze of niceties of propriety and respect. 
He is a man of the period, and has no need of 
you. 

Lastly, there is the vast miscellaneous crowd of 
snobs, fortune-hunters, lick-spittles, thin minds 
beaten to the thinnest, vain shadows, boobies who 
must be flattered, and as grossly as you please. 

Since nothing is impossible, there are even men 
who respect you. If I may be allowed to have 
an opinion, I would hazard the timid suggestion 
that these are the men whom women ought to 
prefer. Lay down as your first principle that 
you love those who love you, and you will have 
a host of friends ; as your second principle that 
you love those who esteem you, and the essential 
choice will immediately be effected. And this 



RELATIONSHIPS 209 

is really an easy matter. You are all true aristo- 
crats, dilettanti of life : you like to be served, 
but with a free, willing service. You want men 
to be men, not slaves, and to take you into their 
lives at the behest, not of folly, but of taste. 
You laugh at them, and profess to think their 
passion a trifle ridiculous ; but in reality it delights 
you. Men, you say, are dreadful creatures ; yet 
you venerate them. You exact their submission, 
expect them to be weak where you are concerned, 
on the charming condition that you feel all the 
time their weakness to be feigned ; for if it is 
genuine, let us hold our peace. The true man 
in your eyes is the virile being, the man who, 
while capable of the highest raptures, compels 
your respect ; the man to whom you will cling 
to-morrow, and who does not fail to let you know 
it. You feel that his hold on you and respect 
for you result from his rendering you what is 
your due — neither more nor less. As a rule, too, 
your noble desire to help men and to exert more 
or less influence on them, is not without a measure 
of vanity. But even here you must keep within 
bounds ; some women make a mistake in sur- 
rounding themselves with men who are making 
a noise in the world. Alas ! glory itself is a street 
with broad gutters ; some great men are only 
lucky humbugs ; others gain by exhibiting them- 



2io THE ART OF LIFE 

selves in the glare of the footlights, which suits 
their bonelessness. They fascinate and dazzle, 
it is true, but they will never love any one but 
themselves. 

The more sincere, the greater a man is, the less 
is he complex. His very features wear an ex- 
pression of confidence, active, frank, wholesome, 
attractive. The life of St. Vincent de Paul is a 
romance ; but what wonderful unity it possesses ! 
If you relish a man's honesty, his freedom of 
mind ; if, even, it gives you pleasure to find in 
his soul a somewhat bitter savour, harsh but tonic, 
you are worthy of him ! Falsehood and trickery 
are virtues of the servants' hall, the brand of our 
neurasthenias; then help this vigorous being to 
live a full life. If he is a scholar, whom much 
learning is making mad, you will cause the in- 
vigorating air of life to penetrate even the covers 
of his books. If his eyes are shut to beauty of 
form, from you he will quickly learn to open them. 
Whether he be sanguine or melancholy, quick- 
witted or stolid, you will show, in spite of 
Aristotle, that these high and subtle distinctions 
blend as in a crucible in the pretty hands of a 
mistress. You will make him a considerate and 
peace-loving creature, a thinking and religious 
soul : you will enter the prison-house of his 
spirit, and throw wide its windows. You cannot 



RELATIONSHIPS 211 

make the sun, to be sure, but you can let in its 
light and heat. As for the legion of beings who 
drift aimlessly along, tossed hither and thither 
like rudderless ships — these are casual acquaint- 
ances whom you may try, out of pure goodness 
and loving-kindness, to help and benefit, just as 
you would gently tend anaemic plants dying for 
want of water and air. Only you must take care 
not to let them believe that wretchedness is their 
native element, for they are only too ready to 
persuade themselves that a jail-bird and wastrel, 
a disreputable drone like Verlaine, is worthy of a 
statue. A pretty art, forsooth, to be incapable 
of enduring a recollection or an odour without 
swooning or getting drunk ! 






CHAPTER THE SIXTH 

CONVERSATION 

" Etre femme sans jalousie, 
Et belle sans coquetterie, 
Bien juger sans beaucoup savoir, 
Et bien parler sans le vouloir, 
N'etre haute ni familiere, 
N 'avoir point d'inegalite ; 
C'est le portrait de La Valliere." — 
Mme de la Valliere, by Voltaire. 

" L'esprit, l'imagination, 
Les graces, la philosophic, 
L'amour du vrai, le gout du bon, 
Avec un peu de fantaisie." — Mme 
de Saint-fulien by VOLTAIRE. 1 

In former times the aesthetic cultivation of life 
led up to an art, its crown and consummation, 
which seemed as natural among women as, let 
us say, among the bees : the art of holding a 
salon and queening it there. Even a dairymaid, 
I believe, could then have gathered men about 
her, and set them bringing honey to the hive. A 

1 [" Womanly without being jealous, beautiful without being a coquet, 
of sound judgment though little knowledge, an excellent talker with- 
out conscious effort, neither uppish nor familiar, evenly balanced — 
such is the portrait of Madame de la Valliere." 

" Wit, imagination, charms, philosophy, love of the true, taste for the 
good, with a spice of capriciousness."] 



CONVERSATION 213 

good talker was looked upon as the supreme artist, 
so much the more because people were somewhat 
prone to despise the printed word, regarding it 
rather as a public commodity, debased by being 
brought within reach of the vulgar, like an article 
of agricultural or intellectual produce. 

It is not a little difficult for us in these days to 
realise the social importance of conversation to 
our ancestors. "The thoughts of men have to be 
loved to be understood." 1 " A man believes, not 
merely with his intellect, but also with his senti- 
ments and impulses, native or acquired." 2 That 
is the artistic principle which used to hold. They 
relied on conversation to invest the loftiest scientific 
speculations with special attractiveness, and to in- 
due them with an almost physical vitality. 

Sociability, the bonds of human affection, were 
thus closely connected with something immeasur- 
ably higher — the Idea. And, in truth, what would 
pure Idea be unless there were some one to bring 
it out of the laboratory, so to speak, and become 
its propagator, apostle, and artist ? 

And it was in this function that conversation 
excelled. It was in many ways a disseminator 
of life, because it was in some sort (if I may be for- 
given the barbarism) the sympathisation of life. In 
France, writes Madame de Stael, "it kindles men's 

1 Guyon. 2 M. Fouillee. 



214 THE ART OF LIFE 

wits as elsewhere music or strong drink does." 
"Conversation," remarks another woman, "is the 
complement of masculine work — its life, warmth, 
and soul — that which man really demands of his 
helpmeet, because he himself has neither the means 
nor the time to procure it. . . . If both saddled 
themselves with the same task, who would do the 
other part of the work ? The other is in life what 
the flame is to the lamp. You cannot dissever 
them without creating darkness." * 

We know the material of many conversations of 
the past. Indeed, a famous book, Castiglione's 
Courtier, served for a very long period as a grammar 
or manual of the art. Castiglione's characters are 
representative of the cream of society as it was 
understood in his day, — great lords, artists, or 
writers, all pure aesthetes, highly instructed, emi- 
nently refined, moulded by feminine hands, models 
of courtesy and grace, though without a touch of 
priggishness. They handled the drollest and the 
more serious topics alike with the same gaiety and 
profundity ; their conversation ranged over sport 
and pastimes, and the most varied occupations, 
with the greatest freedom. 

The women entered with knowledge into all the 
subjects of discourse — matters of art or affairs of 
life ; they had less originality, perhaps, than their 

1 Madame Neera in the Journal des D3ats, October 22, 1899. 



CONVERSATION 215 

male friends, less pungency ; but, as a rule, they 
struck a sympathetic note, and in particular exer- 
cised a moderating force. They excelled in guiding 
a conversation, in keeping it within due bounds ; 
even if they scolded a little, men felt how delicately 
and with what exquisite charm. And observe that, 
while we still mention with respect the names of 
the great warriors of the Renaissance — Bayard, La 
Tremoille, and others — we have not forgotten the 
names of those eminent women whose sword was 
their speech ; to wit, Margaret, the sister of Francis 
the First, who was the foremost among women in 
an age when women were the foremost of man- 
kind. 

And yet none of these women ever dreamed of 
following external careers like our ' feminists ' ; 
indeed, they would have regarded many of the 
customs of our modern society as too masculine. 
While playing a great part, they deliberately kept 
within the pale of private life. Their dearest wish 
was to remain rose-buds of affection, and they 
almost apologised for having wit ; " happily it costs 
nothing." 1 

To recall these ancient principles is in these days 
almost to pronounce a funeral oration. Not that 
we have ceased to talk or to write letters, of course 
— we talk and write only too much ; but we no 

1 Madame de Lambert, 



216 THE ART OF LIFE 

longer say the same things or have the same end 
in view. We say what we have to say and are 
done with it, never attempting to give our con- 
versation charm. 'Tis less art and more business 
to-day ; at every street corner yawning letter-boxes 
(so happily called ' mouths' by the Italians) pro- 
trude their lips to suck our life ; a club, a public 
board, an office, do the rest It is maintained, 
moreover, that conversation of the old type is no 
longer possible, and that if it were it would bore 
us ; and we may well believe it, since even in our 
moments of leisure we prefer being bored in other 
ways. Conversation no longer has any practical 
interest, because it consists mainly in repeating 
what we have just read : the newspapers and re- 
views supply us constantly with the sayings of 
those whose profession it is to speak, and many 
people think that these monologues, which they 
read in their arm-chairs, and which afterwards 
serve to light the fire, are excellent substitutes for 
the trouble we should have to take to speak our- 
selves, or merely to listen. 

This seems to me somewhat unreasonable. 
Without denying for a moment that the news- 
papers sparkle with wit, I may be permitted to 
stick to my belief that there is still room for the 
spoken word, whose fire, vivacity, and glowing 
franki.°ss nothing can ever equal. And may I be 



CONVERSATION 217 

allowed to add that the difficulties of conversation 
are vastly exaggerated ? A woman, to guide it 
well, does not need much eloquence or know- 
ledge : she smites the rock like Moses and lets the 
spring gush forth. Communication is then estab- 
lished between herself and her guests ; she diffuses 
her friends' thought better than they would do it 
themselves, and they in their turn diffuse some- 
thing they have gained from her. 

She turns isolated individuals into beings living 
a collective life ; and the consequences are incal- 
culable. One inspiring emotion, however transi- 
tory, is enough, if it finds a moment's lodgment in 
the heart, to colour all our ideas for a long time 
to come. 

Herein lies the true importance of conversation, 
the something which nothing can replace — to give 
ourselves freely, and to ask freely of others. 1 Not 

1 " Sometimes, during a long life, a man's only knowledge of God 
is a vague impression — the impression produced on him by a summer 
evening, for instance. 

" But the instinct for love and the divine is only slumbering. In 
the presence of beauty, love always awakes. 

"It is so natural an aspiration of the human heart to give itself 
away that, the instant a man presents himself, with no suspicions 
either of himself or of you, you see hastening from the four winds 
long processions of souls hungering and thirsting after the Ideal. 
Reason comprehends a partial gift : affection understands nothing but 
holocausts. 

"What is needed is, first the gift of oneself, and then the large 
demand from others." — Paul Sabatier, St. Francis of Assisi. 



218 THE ART OF LIFE 

to be satisfied with subscribing to a newspaper ! 
Further, this very trouble at which we grumble, and 
which we are so anxious to avoid — what else is it 
but the art of making oneself pleasant, the art of 
politeness, one of the enchantments of civilisation, 
which is sure to bring with it the exquisite virtues 
of sociability, forbearance, indulgence ? — the art 
whose aim is to induce fellow-feeling and real 
sympathy among men ? 

To receive guests and talk to them is not, then, 
waste of time for a woman ; she is simply fulfilling 
a duty, and giving us moral nourishment. St. 
Bernard made this observation long ago when he 
said that the social virtues, " far from being an 
obstacle to the spiritual progress of women," help 
to further it ; and it was Madame Necker who 
declared, a hundred years ago : " They are more 
virtuous in Switzerland than they are in Paris " — 
naturally — "but only in Paris do they talk well 
about virtue." 

Many people think that social relations are con- 
fined to laughing in company, or at any rate in 
keeping up the appearance of laughter. They 
will do anything to maintain a perpetual giggle. 
It is both good manners and good sense, I ad- 
mit, to take life cheerily, more especially when it 
is far from a laughing matter : " Unless we laugh, 
perchance we shall e'en cry." But to be ever 



CONVERSATION 219 

grinning hardly fosters conversation : laughter is 
contagious, but not sympathetic. It never ex- 
presses tenderness or graciousness of feeling : it 
is a nervous outcome of surprise, disdain, or in- 
congruity, a sort of primitive whinny, explosive, 
spasmodic, half convulsive, interrupting the flow of 
speech. If it is hearty, it shakes the whole frame, 
contracts the diaphragm ; the head shakes, the 
eyes stream with involuntary tears, the eyelids are 
screwed together, the mouth drops half open, two 
deep furrows stretch from lips to eyes, and the 
facial nerves work convulsively. There is no music 
in the sound. Laughter like this should be a very 
occasional luxury. Somebody once compared the 
role of woman to the action of a packer putting 
sawdust between bits of crockery : in immoderate 
laughter it is the other way about ; you hear the 
crash of breaking china. One should only laugh 
heartily among intimate friends. Sadness is more 
intelligible : tears penetrate and enchant the soul : 
they are the pearls of life ! The greatest favour 
one can bestow on a friend is to weep before him. 

But before strangers we have no business to lay 
bare our souls : we have only to show good nature 
and affability. We can be moved without weep- 
ing, or laugh a half-laugh which gives fire and 
brilliance to the eyes without distorting the mouth — 
differing little from a smile, 



220 THE ART OF LIFE 

The matter of a conversation produces less effect 
than the manner of it. Without any attempt at 
acting, the play of lips and eyes and muscles on the 
speaking face of a woman interprets her thought 
better than the finest of speeches. What a wonder- 
ful thing, this gift of speech ! It is bread that multi- 
plies, the more it is eaten ! 



CHAPTER THE SEVENTH 

"A MAN IS JUDGED BY WHAT HE LOVES" 1 

" I will not say that women, like Moliere's 
Martine, love to be beaten : but they do not 
much mind a beating, provided you love 
them." — Saint Marc Girardin. 

" To live after the spirit is to love after the 
spirit ; to live after the flesh is to love after 
the flesh : for love is life to the soul, as the 
soul is life to the body." — St. Francis of 
Sales. 

"Who loves not against hope knows not 
love." — Schiller. 

Finally, over and above the affections that are a 
matter of habit, there is that rare, almost unique 
condition — perfect intimacy in heart and soul. 

The unfading charm of intimate fellowship and 
mutual confidences epitomises, in fact, the art of 
life, to such a degree that truly pious minds regard 
it as a pure effect of divine grace ; in other words, 
as the highest manifestation of divine providence. 

" God did me the grace of saving me from my- 
self, not to give me to you, but so that I may be 
you," wrote St. Francis of Sales to Madame de 
Chantal. 

1 St. Augustine. 

221 



222 THE ART OF LIFE 

Such communion of souls is a sanctuary, a re- 
treat from the crowd, peace of mind, the flower of 
one's being. 

Of what is this intimate affection formed ? Like 
every union, every tie — of an original bent towards 
the same things, pursued by different paths : it 
demands two kindred hearts and two disparate 
minds. Such minds are mutually complementary ; 
they fuse, and in due time attain to perfect unity, 
which is the fruit of friendship rather than strictly 
its origin. 

Affection, then, may be called the profound 
union of two beings, different, but never rivals : in 
other words, two men (or two women) are often 
bound one to the other in a living friendship, but 
a complete and indelible affection perhaps only 
exists between a man and a woman, because their 
sentiments, keen, but differing in kind, are mutually 
penetrative, like two saws interlocked. 

Look at the philosophy of the book of Genesis. 
Adam and Eve lived in perfect purity, believing 
that they were one. They were ashamed when 
they became conscious of their duality : that 
is, when they saw that they had separate wills, 
interests, and desires, divergent or convergent, — for 
a hermit never blushes. Thus came social relation- 
ship into being, to which we are all condemned, 
since we are sundry. Separateness is therefore a 



HOW A MAN IS JUDGED 223 

transgression, from which we can only be redeemed 
by affection : and affection is a perfect blending of 
two in one. 

This supreme need for pouring out one's soul 
dominates all hearts. Marriage attains the height 
of this moral union ; its mission is essentially to 
satisfy this clamant need. Here and there, more- 
over, one meets with the enchanting mystery of 
purely intellectual affections. I am well aware 
that no one believes in them nowadays : there are 
epochs which see evil in everything, and others 
good in everything. It will perhaps, I admit, be 
ridiculous, rash, almost scandalous to advocate a 
pure spiritual affection in a society whose greatest 
joy is to applaud high-kicking or risky jokes. Yet 
it is true that the higher we rise in the scale of 
being, the more do the three primitive instincts, 
defence, attack, and procreation, pale before new 
conditions of enjoyment and culture. A man in 
whom the elements are really well mixed troubles 
very little about women in so far as physical charm 
is concerned. Without going back to the platonic 
loves of Dante, Petrarch, and Michelangelo, there 
were many acknowledged, blazoned intimacies in 
the nineteenth century, which wronged no one 
and were merely the truest of friendships. The 
Muses and Egerias of famous men have sometimes 
covered them with ridicule ; but certain mystics 



224 THE ART OF LIFE 

have derived from such connections great and super- 
natural benefits. 

Far be it from me, however, to attempt to decide 
whether we ought to soar to these altitudes, or 
whether marriage is not the safer road. I am here 
dealing only with one psychological consideration 
which every man must apply for himself, namely, 
with love, which gives us this joy of winning for 
ourselves an inexhaustible devotion, a perfect 
affinity ; and I say with Lacordaire, 1 that " no 
true Christian who lives his creed can be without 
a measure of this love, which flows in our veins as 
the very blood of Christ." " Christianity gave birth 
to a new sentiment, which has, so to speak, fused 
love and friendship in one and the same crucible, 
giving to love the endurance, the fixity, the serenity 
in which it was wanting, and rendering friendship 
more tender, more pleasant, more endearing." 2 

After that, you may argue and split hairs for 
ever on these distinctions — declare that it is always 
love with women, to whom friendship is unknown ; 
that the friendship of a man is a thing for impor- 
tant crises, and the love of a woman for every day, 
and so forth : what is the good of these reasonings, 
or these pleasantries, or the reproaches founded on 

1 Life of St. Mary Magdalene. 

2 M. Daniel Ollivier, lecture at Levallois-Perret, March 1899, 
published in the Bulletin de P (Euvre de N.-D. du Salut. 



HOW A MAN IS JUDGED 225 

the possibility of abuses ? Everything is liable to 
abuse. But true virtue is not, in St. Augustine's 
words, "the trepidation of weakness fearing to 
commit sin ; it is the tranquillity of love assured of 
avoiding it." 

Marriage is its stronghold sure. But mayhap 
women would be less religious were priests not 
men, and we men should be more religious were 
women to serve the altar. What does that prove 
save a natural instinct ? Every moral affection 
ennobles the spirit, first aesthetically, because it 
fixes our attention on the beautiful sides of a man's 
character, and makes us esteem him above the rest 
of men ; secondly, because every living affection 
has in itself a higher order of attraction. This 
sentiment was sketched in a word by Mademoiselle 
Valentine de Lamartine, in a sentence addressed to 
her uncle : " Even in a ball-room I find a way to 
unite myself to you, through Him who binds hearts 
together." 

Sincere affection is, then, a supreme manifesta- 
tion of art, since it elevates others as well as our- 
selves, and ennobles our lives. When we rise to 
this condition, it is not compassion or sympathy 
that sets our heart throbbing with the joys or 
sorrows of another : these joys and sorrows are 
our very own ; we instinctively take them upon 
us and into our lives. We thus gain a sense of 



226 THE ART OF LIFE 

enlargement and progress in ourselves, and we are 
happy. 

And movement in the spiritual life is immediately 
repeated in the physical life ; even a horse's pulse 
is quickened by a mental excitation, as, for in- 
stance, when it is angrily objurgated. Affection will 
in the end produce a permanent effect, but mean- 
while it gives instant shocks of feeling : every 
emotion in a woman sets a host of little physical 
organs hurrying to regain their posts, like soldiers 1 
when the camp is alarmed, so that all may answer 
to their names. 

More than that, it has a contagious character. 
In the first place, it mutually transforms the two 
persons concerned. 

"Such is the force of love," said one of the 
Church Fathers, 1 " that you will inevitably resemble 
the object of your love, and after having become 
like him through your common sentiments of 
affection, you will be in some sort transformed 
into his very self by the bond of love." 2 

And at the same time love overflows upon your 
surroundings ; observers are struck by it and 
wish to share it. It is like an epidemic. We de- 
light in the consciousness that all things about 
us are united in what Cicero called conspiratio 

1 Hugues de Saint-Victor. 
2 The title, Imitation of Jesus Christ, suggests a psychological truth. 



HOW A MAN IS JUDGED 227 

amoris, a permanent complot, a conspiracy of 
love. 

Finally, the soul, in thus partaking of this sacra- 
ment of affection, and comforted thereby, soars on 
so strong a wing as almost to touch eternal things, 
and we feel that, even beyond the tomb, this love 
will never die. 

O the exquisite art of attaining this oneness, of 
thus completing each other, and growing ! — grow- 
ing through joy, growing through sorrow ; growing 
even when affection appeals for pardon and its 
sweetness is mingled with tears ! Never will 
human legislator invent this art. No section of 
the Code can order us to love through another, to 
fear for another. 

This is art— the art of marriage, the art of life. 






CHAPTER THE EIGHTH 

THE DIVINE PLAN 

" These things I command you, that ye 
love one another. If the world hate you, ye 
know that it hated Me before it hated you." 
— St. John xv. 17, 18. 

" There is for the human soul a divine 
plan . . . and to realise it, all our cultivation 
of soul and heart and mind is not super- 
fluous." — DUPANLOUP. 

" Dost thou not know, O my soul, that thy 
Spouse, author of all things, didst give thee 
this sensibility, this nobility, that thou mightest 
not live without love? St. Jerome saith to 
us : 'It is hard for the human soul not to 
love ; it is even necessary that it should be 
under the dominion of some affection. It 
must seek its happiness either in high things 
or in things that are low.' " — St. Bona- 
VENTURE, Soliloquy. 

The divine plan of our life is the maintenance of 
a full vitality. If the balance is held even between 
the spending and the renewal of its energies, and 
the sense of durability is thus added to the senti- 
ment of order, life deserves to be called beautiful 
and awakens love, so that, born of love, it has its 
being by love and for love. To what shall I liken 

it ? It is like a lake, which is bound to keep above 

228 



THE DIVINE PLAN 229 

the level of its outlet, neither drying up nor over- 
flowing. Or, better, it may be appraised by ther- 
mometric scale. 

Degrees. 
Death 

Madness, delirium 55 

Homicidal mania 50 

Frenzy 48 

Anger, passionate love 45 

Enervation, tears, cries, aimless movements . 40 

Ill-regulated activity 38 

Ambition 35 

Boisterous gaiety 30 

Courage, ardour, love 25 

Frank joy in life 18 

Tranquillity 12 

Harmony, light, liberty 10 

Average condition, fulness, enjoyment . . 7 

Zero 

Gentleness, timidity 5 

Melancholy, hypochondria, humility ... 10 
Material appetites, enervating, sexual . . .15 

Coldness of blood, deficient circulation . . 20 

Idleness, fatigue, apathetic resignation . . 25 

Sadness 28 

Pain 30 

Fear, despair, terror 35 

Syncope, coma, loss of consciousness ... 38 

Dissolution 40 

Death 

At zero, life, sustained solely by sentiments of 
the Good and the True, enjoys moderate activity — 



230 THE ART OF LIFE 

a temperature of March or October. Below zero 
come the depressive emotions ; which are insuffi- 
cient for the normal life. Let me quote the well- 
known and just saying of Madame de Maintenon : 
" She is too sensitive to be happy " — too sensitive, 
in other words, her sensibility is condensed, forced, 
exaggerated. 

These emotional chills are the natural reaction 
from excessive violence of emotion, and the reaction 
is all the greater because of the intimate relation- 
ship subsisting between the extremes ; anger and 
violent joy are on the borderland of despair, which 
is depressive ; despair, carried to extremes, reverts 
to the violent outbursts of anger. Even such a 
strong and tranquillising sentiment as maternal 
love induces paroxysms of tears or of joy. Further, 
weakness and indecision are often followed by un- 
governable agitation, and from certain ' pleasures ' 
we sink back suddenly into a frigid pessimism — like 
coffee that has settled on the grounds. 

Hence we must make due allowance for the ex- 
treme sensibility of man's nature. It is charac- 
teristic of happiness to wish to stop at a certain 
point, leisurely to enjoy the strength acquired 
and the full consciousness of being alive. " The 
more we love, the stronger we are," 1 and the more 
stable in consequence. " Perfect peace," said St. 

1 Bonghi. 



THE DIVINE PLAN 231 

Augustine, "is found where faithfulness in love is 
found." Happiness comes to us and says : " Ye 
shall find rest unto your souls, for My yoke is easy 
and My burden is light." Sweet words ! — that fell 
from no philosopher's lips — divine words ! the plan 
divine ! True it is, then, that, in spite of our baser 
impulses, in spite of the menaces of pain, bitter- 
ness, violence, gloom, the heart can rest in peace 
and joy ! O blessed peace ! — not weakness, but 
the reverse of weakness ; not an abdication, but a 
force, a light — the peace of quietude and love ! 
Let the man who does not appreciate the human 
affections try to avail himself of them without his 
soul finding a sweet joy therein ! It is useless to 
seek for this inestimable condition either below 
zero, in this thermometer we have constructed, or 
too high above. 

For every virtue is capable of diminishing and of 
increasing ; every virtue is matched with a vice ; to 
every force correspond a weakness and an abuse. 
There are flames that warm and illumine, and 
flames that devour : it is one thing to play with 
matches, and another thing to bear onward an 
active flame, the torch of life — peace instead of tur- 
moil, beauty instead of disorder. . To rise to the 
active life — that is the aim ! In other words, 
passion is a necessity. You will be happy when 
you have to exercise self-restraint ; when your 



\ 



232 THE ART OF LIFE 

heart inhabits an ideal mansion, peopled with affec- 
tions so pure, so noble, so steadfast, that time, nay, 
Death itself, cannot wither them ; when your physi- 
cal being is conscious of the soul's stirring and sus- 
taining power ; when activity of mind quickens the 
pulse, and activity of emotion raises the tempera- 
ture and sends a rush of energy to the brain. 

The first effect of love, then, is produced on the 
individual ; its secondary effect concerns what you 
love. 

To keep you at the desired level, your affection 
must be reinforced with respect and esteem, for we 
live in what we love. 

" Nothing is keener and more penetrating than 
love. Its nature is not to rest until it has plumbed, 
to the utmost of its power, the capacity, the depth, 
the whole being of the object towards which it is 
directed." x 

We must, therefore, choose wisely the object of 
our love. The highest object of devotion in this 
world is a soul capable of advancing day by day 
towards perfection, of renewing its youth, of reno- 
vating itself, and of luring us thus towards progress 
by means of a reciprocal desire not to displease. 

And then, it is the gift of God to love all that is 
beautiful. 

1 Richard, quoted by St. Bonaventure, The Seven Roads to 
Eternity. 



THE DIVINE PLAN 233 

" To win you and attract you to His love, God has 
lavished on man the whole beauty of His divinity. 
I say that God has lavished Himself on man, for I 
see no reserve in His great gift, nor has He retained 
anything of His plenitude that man may not 
share." 1 

Wherefore let us love physical beauty, the objects 
of our sight and touch, the perfume extolled in the 
Song of Songs, Let us love glory — glory beneficent 
and everlasting ! " Blessed be the name of the 
Lord from this time forth and ever more ! " Let us 
love the shadows, the hopes, the prosaic things of 
life. Let us mingle joy and love even with pain. 
O ye saintly souls, who love the sick beds of the 
poor, and infuse love into the most painful duties ! — 
ye incomparable women, who possess the secret of 
life ! — love all that ye do ! Whether ye eat or 
sleep, whatever ye do, still love ! Love your pro- 
fession, your career, your destiny, so that your tree 
is full of sap. Love the past, the present, the 
future. You are a Frenchwoman : love the pro- 
ducts of your land, the flowers of France, the 
French tongue. It is no question now of illusion 
or suggestion : give your heart's love. Love your- 
selves, since we are taught to love our neighbours 
as ourselves : show loving-kindness to yourselves, 
and do not wantonly drive thorns into your souls ; 

1 Guerric. 



234 THE ART OF LIFE 

learn to forget, even to pardon, so that ye give 
yourselves peace ! Such was the grand, sublime 
aspiration of the women of the Renaissance — to 
love themselves. To declare war on gloom, as you 
should do on smoking-rooms and clubs ; to re- 
habilitate a sacred joy ; to substitute active virtue 
for passive virtue ; was needful then, and is needful 
still. " Thou sayest nothing ? — hold thy peace in 
love : thou dost cry aloud ? — cry in love ; thou art 
angry ? — be angry in love ; thou pardonest ? — par- 
don for love. So long as love is the marrow of life, 
thy life can produce nought but good." 1 

"The soul of the law is to love, and to do all 
things through love : the rest is but the husk and 
shell of a good life." 2 And this is the strong 
life. 

And now consult a physician : he will tell you 
that your vitality is enhanced : your eyes shine, 
your pulse beats more firmly ; the blood-vessels 
dilate, the lungs expand, nutrition and secretion are 
more active. You love. And emotion has had 
the wonderful effect of knitting together the 
primitive desires : the physical instincts and 
suggestions ; the moral instincts for affection, ad- 
miration, glory, self-love ; the pleasure of posses- 
sion, the joy of action, the flow of sympathy. 

1 St. Augustine on the First Epistle of St. John, Tract VII. 
2 Bossuet. 



THE DIVINE PLAN 235 

These are the motive forces of your being, 1 and in 
heightening them you elevate yourself, or rather, in 
the Apostle's words, you have all and abound. 

Unless vitality is sometimes in excess, there is no 
life. It is really the vital electricity — 

" Cette pale et faible etincelle 

Qui vit en toi, 
Elle marche, elle est immortelle, 

Et suit sa loi ; 
Pour la transmettre, il faut soi-meme 

La recevoir, 
Et Ton songe a tout ce qu'on aime 

Sans le savoir." 2 

A spark from Heaven has accomplished all : it is 
strength and light in the home, and even far 
beyond its bounds. 

" I find thy image in every creature. Love, what 
madness in me to wish to flee thee ! 

" Love, I flee thee lest I yield thee my heart. I 
see that thou art transfiguring me, transforming 
me into the likeness of thyself, so that I no longer 
find a dwelling in my heart, and know myself 
no longer." 3 

Life's great question is, rightly to place our love. 

1 Dugald Stewart ; Herbert Spencer. 

2 Alfred de Musset. [" This pale and feeble spark that lives in thee is 
ever moving ; it is immortal and follows its law. To transmit it one 
needs must receive it oneself, and one thinks of all one loves, without 
knowing it."] 

3 Jacopone (Ozanam, Poetes franciscains, p. 203). 



CHAPTER THE NINTH 

A REASONABLE FOLLY 

"By love we ask, we seek, we knock, we 
find — and by love we keep what we have 
obtained." — St. Augustine. 

"When we embrace in our spirit, by means 
of knowledge and love, some eternal thing, we 
live already in the heavens." — St. Bona- 
VENTURE, Soliloquy. 

"Love is the life of our soul, and without 
love it could not live." — Hugues de Saint- 
Victor. 

The great business of life is to place our love 
well. Ah ! how can it be that certain pedants of 
logic hold sensibility in fear, and dare not, as it 
were, pronounce the supreme word Love ? Have 
they never known, then, anything but the abuse of 
the creature, and its shame ? But in this regard 
reason also is prone to error, with perhaps worse 
results than the blunders of sensibility. 

Life has its beauty and its happiness. Certainly 
we can put them to ill uses, yet it remains true that 
love is the perfect well-spring of life, or, to change 
the figure, it is the net in which God holds all his 

creatures. 'Tis the Lord's will to lay hold of us 

236 



A REASONABLE FOLLY 237 

"■by the bonds of Adam." 1 "The beauty of the 
body is the guide towards beauty of soul ; natural 
virtue raises us towards the divine life." 2 

The pure and lawful love of a thing that is alto- 
gether lovely is like leaven in bread — like the 
manna miraculously sent to the Hebrews as they 
crossed the desert. It gives so sweet a taste to 
life that we no longer love life itself, but the 
perfume of passion mingled with it, and we feel 
that this perfume comes from some serene and 
sunlit shore, where we trust to disembark. And 
then, if, along with peace and joy, we find strength 
and the promise of a life unending, wherewithal 
can the present life be better filled ? 

Enthusiasm leads us on, and at once we feel 
that it cannot remain fruitless. It must either 
disappear in instinct, in appetite, as electricity 
disappears into the earth, or else, having by some 
inexplicable process become chronic in our veins, 
it transforms us by a mysterious dynamic force. 
"The foot of the soul is love," as St. Bonaventure 
says in the Seven Roads to Eternity. We step 
on towards a gleaming light which advances ever 
before us, shining more and more unto the perfect 
day. We march towards it with firm tread, perfectly 
balanced, 3 in the normal order of our being. 4 

1 St. Bernard. 2 St. Augustine. 

3 St. Gregory. 4 St. Anselm. 



238 THE ART OF LIFE 

The physiologists, like the mystics, here bow 
the knee to the omnipotence of love. And in 
truth, could anything be clearer ? Does not a 
mother work miracles for her children ? Instead 
of narrowing the soul, calculating, counting all the 
costs, is she not at certain moments transported 
by the sacred poesy of life, electrified by passion ? — 
does she not then discover abundant resources of 
will, attention, energy — even physical resources 
quite unsuspected ? It seems as though her heart 
were unfathomable, and that at her passionate 
yearning an inexhaustible fountain wells up. Such 
is the law, even in instinct. Watch the hen with 
her brood, even though they be ducklings : how 
she stiffens her feathers and stands threateningly 
erect ! Where are her former fears ? What a 
madness of heroism ! She does not weigh and 
ponder : she loves. 

Enthusiasm, love as charity — " the unitive virtue," 
as the mystics say — is the strongest thing in the 
world ; it even welds men's spirits, fusing them to- 
gether, and making of them, as it were, one golden 
element. It reveals itself speedily, for it overflows, 
rejoicing in the truth, sympathising in another's 
failure, delighting in another's progress. And every 
life worthy of the name touches enthusiasm at some 
point ; a time comes when an aptitude for great 
things and great deeds shines forth in us. Passion 



A REASONABLE FOLLY 239 

engenders passion ; this again sows the seed of 
passion, and passion gathers the fruit. 

Emotion is as impossible to chain as electricity. 
It puts forth light and energy, and creates for itself 
an atmosphere of joy. Love is confident, eloquent ; 
it believes, and is believed in ; one devotes oneself 
heart and soul to a task, to an idea, to life ; and 
enthusiasm evokes enthusiasm, as we see in the 
shining example of Joan of Arc. 

Without passion, I ask you, what man exists 
who would start at a word for the ends of the 
earth to meet battle, fame, and death ? Charle- 
magne, St. Louis, Napoleon — were all the enter- 
prises they embarked in purely rational ? What 
an endless tale of follies is history, if you come to 
that ! — follies which raised the humble and down- 
trodden above themselves ! follies which trans- 
figured their very flesh ! " Dead in the odour 
of sanctity" — pious neurotic creatures, prudently 
fortified against misfortune, and even they per- 
suaded that love is strong as death ! x " Our God 
is a consuming fire." "I am come," He said, "to 
send fire on the earth " — the fire that purifies, the 
fire that fuses, the fire that burns the chaff, but 
has no effect on gold or bronze. " Did not our 
hearts burn within us as He talked with us by 
the way ? " 

1 St, Gregory. 



240 THE ART OF LIFE 

Do you know the superb and immortal dia- 
logue between the creature and the Creator, attri- 
buted to St. Francis of Assisi ? 

St. Francis. — " Heaven and earth cry unto me, 
and proclaim aloud, and all the creatures it is 
my duty to love say unto me : Love love, which 
hath formed us for the purpose of winning thee 
to itself." 

Christ urges St. Francis to command his feelings. 

St. Francis. — " O Christ, Thou hast robbed me 
of my heart, and Thou bidst me bring order into my 
soul ! Thou thyself wert not able to withstand 
the force of love. Love made Thee descend from 
heaven to earth : Thou didst abase thyself to the 
low estate of a Man walking this world despised. 
Thou desiredst neither house nor land, but poverty 
alone, that Thou mightest make us rich. . . . 

" Often didst Thou walk this earth like a drunken 
man : love was leading Thee like a purchased slave. 
In all things did Thou manifest nought but love, 
thinking never of thyself." l 

Therein is happiness ; and it may be said that, 
through this very ecstasy of enthusiasm, which 
takes us out of ourselves, throwing us into life 
universal, and handing us captive to a higher will, 
this happiness is of the highest possible dignity 
and worth. 

1 Ozanam, Poetes franciscains, p. 98. 



A REASONABLE FOLLY 241 

Happiness is a temporal love, having eternal 
roots ; a love that finds that which it seeks, and 
can still hope for that which it possesses. 

Many sapient inquirers have sought to analyse 
it. Lord Avebury finds its elements in reading, 
travel, a well-ordered house, and the pursuit of 
science. Ruskin went a little farther : " Read, 
think, love, pray." But what are reading, thinking, 
praying, but an indirect conversation with men, a 
direct communion with God ? 

I find the profoundest analysis in one simple 
phrase that gushed from the heart of a loving 
woman : " I can say," she wrote in reference to her 
husband, "that we have never loved each other so 
much as since the day we discovered that we both 
loved God." 1 

Every pure, sincere, profound love rises easily to 
the ideal abstraction, because it is self-sufficient ; it 
bears happiness within itself. 

" Love is, in itself and by its very nature, a 
delight. It is a talent, and its own reward. A 
grand thing is love ! Of all the activities, the 
sentiments, the affections of the soul, love alone 
offers the creature the means of responding, if not 
completely, at least in part, to its author." 2 

Yes, indeed, every enthusiasm has a savour of 

1 Madame Craven, Recit d 'tine sceur. 

2 St. Bonaventure. 



242 THE ART OF LIFE 

continuance : the prospect of death, or of any end 
whatsoever, would rain it. Just as a fire sends its 
flame upward, so it appears natural to believe in 
God when the heart is happy ; it is then that faith 
is at its strongest. 

" Every time that I take my walks, in quiet 
meditation and with peace in my soul, amidst 
a smiling country, whose every charm I relish," 
wrote Madame Roland, "it is a delicious thought 
that I owe these blessings to a divine intelligence ; 
I love, and long to believe. It is only in my dusty 
study, poring over my books, or in the giddy 
throngs of the world, breathing the corruption 
of men, that sentiment withers away, and reason 
looms darkly over clouds of doubt or the poisonous 
exhalations of unbelief." 

If the beauty of a landscape penetrates us thus, 
what sentiments will not inspire two noble and 
pure hearts, beating in unison, completing each 
the other in this earthly life, and setting their 
common affections upon the deathless beyond ? 
Happiness will foster piety in them, and they will, I 
think, gain deeper insight into those burning maxims 
of the Gospel : " God is love ; and he that dwelleth 
in love dwelleth in God. ... In Him was life, and 
the life was the light of men. . . . The Word was 
made flesh, and dwelt among us . . . full of grace 
and truth." 



PART THE FOURTH 
THE FRUITS OF LIFE 



CHAPTER THE FIRST 

THE WILL 

" Happy is the woman who has never 
found pleasure except in rational activities : 
she has the means of amusing herself all her 
life long." — Madame Necker. 

Will, action, joy, desire : in these is summed up 
man. In the primitive state these faculties were 
stimulated into activity for the satisfaction of 
material wants. Now, man's will, his deeds, plea- 
sures, desires, must be actuated by love. 

For life is never, cannot be, at a standstill. The 
aesthetic life is simply superimposed upon the 
practical life : it changes neither its logic nor its 
laws, but exerts an immense tonic influence upon 
it, and gives it a higher and wider scope. 

A woman ennobles herself by not remaining a 
man's doll, and man in his turn gains nobility by 
not remaining her plaything. 

What is the beautiful life ? Alfred de Vigny 
calls it "a thought of youth realised by mature 
age." We ourselves should define it as a woman's 
emotion transmuted into a man's thought. 

The initial mechanism of this higher process is 

245 



246 THE ART OF LIFE 

easily explained. Go to the piano and touch a 
key ; a chord vibrates : the first effect. The sound 
follows, striking upon the ears of those present, 
and awakening emotions and ideas : the second 
effect. We exactly resemble this piano. Without 
entering into technical details about the psychology 
of sensation, it may be remarked that, as we all 
know, when one of the cells of our body is ex- 
cited, by the striking of a note, for instance, 
it answers with a proportionate vibration. This 
vibration, especially if the impact be sudden, takes 
the form of a wave. What is the result ? On the 
one hand, the particular organ concerned gaining 
in susceptibility to stimulus, every emotion seems 
to invite another ; and on the other hand, this 
emotion affects the whole organism, so as to trans- 
form itself into action. 

It can only result in a purely instinctive action, 
what is called a "reflex movement": 1 you are 
struck, — you utter a cry; you see an accident, — your 
heart beats more rapidly. It is, so to speak, the 
simple, primitive signal of the instinct of self- 
preservation. Or, again, instinct may prompt you 
to a positive, almost a rational action : for instance, 
if you fall into the water, you clutch at the nearest 
branch, without waiting to reflect. 

This applies equally to the lower animals : they, 

1 Described with great care by Th, Ribot and Charles Richet. 



THE WILL 247 

indeed, have no control over these movements, 
which are common to them all, unless perhaps 
they are modified by some mechanical cause — 
habit, for instance, or, according to some men of 
science, heredity. But with human beings a per- 
sonal element, the will, intervenes ; the will can 
regulate these acts of instinct, and, at all events, it 
invariably seizes upon them, guides them, and 
extends them. It is this that constitutes the man : 
a prolonged sensation, which, when developed, 
gives birth to intellectual activity, attention, know- 
ledge — such is the human being. 

Once more, man possesses a moral keyboard, 
similar in all respects to this physical keyboard. 
He feels sensations that are purely moral, which, 
guided by the instinct of conscience, give rise to 
primitive acts of moral self-preservation. Here, 
again, the will operates in the same way, com- 
pleting the evolution of the moral character into 
stability, strength, and order. 

Thus there are in us two grades of will, as there 
are two grades of life : the first I will call the lower 
will ; the second, the higher will. If women's 
sphere is the government of the emotions, they 
may play with both hands on the two registers ; 
and if they catch false notes, or notes that are 
merely harsh and metallic, it is for them to tell us so, 
in order that the necessary remedies may be sought, 



248 THE ART OF LIFE 

I have now rapidly described the mechanism : 
to explain its action would be much more difficult. 
Philosophers are forced to recognise as the start- 
ing-point of the higher volition what they call 
1 the moral sense/ and theologians call the ' grace 
of God ' : on either view it is the grace of love. It 
is to this that our will rings responsive ; every day 
men sacrifice themselves, go to their death, win 
triumphs, for causes that are patently bad, whilst 
pure reason is a far less effectual stimulus to 
activity. The volition is sometimes good or bad 
according to the emotion prompting it : a good 
instrument can but show up a detestable touch. If 
women really knew the capabilities of this me- 
chanism, we should be almost entirely at their 
mercy. Happily they do not know, and they often 
believe that the notes of the human instrument 
sound of their own accord, or else that it is neces- 
sary to fall on the keyboard with the full force of 
fist and arm. 

Whoever knows how to rule our emotions will 
act upon our will. No doubt we have a free will, 
and every intelligent, earnest, well-bred, well- 
balanced man acts upon himself. We learn to 
walk, to suppress useless movements, to make 
those that are useful. But how feeble this primary 
knowledge becomes in presence of an emotion ! 
When our heart is stirred, what reasoning, think 



THE WILL 249 

you, will prevail ? " We haven't the head for 
that ! " What a house of cards, at the mercy of 
every wind that blows, and only too ready to 
vanish utterly ! What a fine puppet-show, where 
reason conscientiously performs the antics, while 
all the time the heart is pulling the strings ! An 
idea is so conscious of its inferiority to an emotion, 
that sometimes, as M. Sully-Prudhomme says, it 
tries to simulate the forms of emotion. But it is 
always found out ! 

There are men, however, of vigorous will, who 
attain no slight measure of self-mastery. Exter- 
nally they are unassuming creatures, with clear 
eyes and steady nerves, rather uninteresting, to 
whom the habit of self-command has given an air 
of frigidity, sometimes of hesitancy. They live in 
a perpetual conflict of motives, which their art 
consists in balancing, or, more correctly, in can- 
celling one by another, in the fashion of a clearing- 
house. The structure of their will rests on a 
principle of equilibrium ; to a present misery they 
will oppose an ideal happiness, to a selfish im- 
pulse a pleasure of affection, or vice versa. These 
creatures of reason and will would be ashamed to 
yield to the seductions of the imagination ; their 
prudence seems to them reason itself. But yet, in 
spite of themselves, a passion must expand their 
soul, a shock of moral emotion must develop in 



250 THE ART OF LIFE 

them a higher volition, if they are not to lose a 
great part of the powers they have so dearly 
bought. Pure reason weakens passion ; passion, 
on the contrary, multiplies intellectual force. It 
is natural enough that passion should produce in- 
tellectual energy, since passion is the higher power ; 
but an emotion of desire, love, fear, sharpens and 
amplifies the most obtuse understanding, 1 gives it 
a range almost miraculous. Just as an artist, con- 
centrating his attention on an object that pleases 
him, sees things which other eyes fail to discover, so 
in the art of life the look of love has an immense 
force, not only in the moral world, but in the 
physical world also : witness the strange pheno- 
menon, as yet so little understood, of telepathy. 

In thinking constantly of a person whom we 
love, we come to anticipate almost perfectly his 
actions or his thoughts. Our whole being, if it is 
to exert its full influence, positively needs to con- 
centrate itself upon a single end. The fixed idea 
may become a fell disease ; but a fixed affection is 
a blessing, because it is now, not an end, but a 
motive force. 

So true is this, that no religion has placed upon 

its altars a merely intellectual abstraction. No one 

would worship it. All religions set upon their altars 

our passion, our ardent instincts, the image of God 

1 Ribot, 



THE WILL 251 

Himself ; they promise us the sight of God, the 
fruition of life, perfect happiness, perfect love, to 
be ours without our striving, eternal in the heavens, 
a harvest of pure emotions. That is why a religion 
that is wholly a religion of love has given us the 
power to work miracles. The Master has told us 
that at one vivifying touch of God's love, the deaf 
would hear, the dumb speak, the palsied, the lame, 
the demoniac, take up their beds and walk. 

That is true still. There are in the force of 
emotion riches that we little suspect — physical 
riches ; and, in still greater measure, moral riches. 
Within us lie a host of ideas and latent sentiments 
in the embryonic state. These germs develop, even 
without our knowledge ; we only perceive them 
when they have sprung to maturity. " Our heads 
are full of fine ideas of which we can know 
nothing." And in truth, let me observe in passing, 
there has always been a certain genuine side in 
sorcery, namely, the quest after these unknown 
treasures. 

In this sense it is the duty of all of us to be 
something of sorcerers. A lady wrote to me one 
day that a book of mine had led her into certain 
recesses of her heart thitherto unknown, and helped 
her to take stock of sentiments to whose existence 
she had till then been blind. 

That which a writer will attempt by a change 



252 THE ART OF LIFE 

word, women ought unceasingly to do. They have 
in their hands the torch which will light up the 
dim cold caverns of our souls. They have only to 
raise it aloft and enter. But see ! many take the 
torch, and few have resolution to use it. Or may- 
hap they know not how ; for the loveliest eyes 
may see nothing, the loveliest hands grasp nothing : 
their curiosity perhaps is weak, or they are scared 
at their own shadow ; sometimes also they fear that 
to make a man conscious of his worth would be to 
lose their influence on him ; whereas it is rather 
the contrary that is true. 

A woman must constitute herself the guardian, 
and, so to speak, the purveyor of emotion : " I have 
set you as guardian over my house." Love with 
all your mind the man whom your heart loves. 
If he asserts himself, he does you good service. 
Know how to relax your ostensive guidance, spon- 
taneously, at the right moment ; to withdraw quietly 
within yourself, so as to help this man to open out 
like a flower towards family and country, society, 
and God. Be scrupulous and steadfast. When we 
say, " I will pluck this fruit," our arm rises of its 
own accord. Do not miss the chance of plucking 
happiness for want of raising your arm ! 

A man must needs hate and love. The two 
emotions are identical at bottom : hatred is only 
love reversed — the backward movement of the 



THE WILL 253 

machine. Love and hatred are our springs of 
action. The engine-driver fires his engine, tests its 
works, and on occasion opens the safety-valve. 
There you have it ! — he wants to keep up a brisk, 
bright, clear flame, blazing steadily. 

It may be said that, while a sentiment of affection 
manifestly can awake and heighten in a man the 
elements of will, it seems harder to admit that the 
assistance of a woman can substantially further this 
will's development. For the will is only valuable 
by its own strength ; to assist it is almost to put it 
in tutelage, and are women really qualified to exer- 
cise so high a moral tutelage ? That would pre- 
suppose the possession of a vigour of soul not 
always native to them. 

Truth to tell, the moral weakness of women is, I 
believe, somewhat exaggerated. What they really 
need is, not so much some one to lean on, as some 
one to link hands with. Their weakness is sometimes 
due to defects of education, or the fact that will, 
with them, has never come to maturity, and fails to 
provide them with trustworthy means of defence ; 
or it may result from the trials of life. Alas ! it 
is too true that we see pitiable women drifting 
aimlessly through the world, like ships disabled 
and left rudderless in the dark ! In other words, 
their will, like ours, is human, and subject to the 
same vicissitudes. But weakness of will is not a 



254 THE ART OF LIFE 

contagious disease ; on the contrary, it is cured by- 
contact with another weakness, so that the weak- 
ness of women is actually turned to strength, is 
remedied, by their sensibility. A woman of weak 
will may minister with admirable efficacy to a man 
equally weak, and thereby she will minister to 
herself. That is the glory of women : even in cir- 
cumstances of the greatest affliction they have this 
wonderful gift, the power to dry and conceal their 
own tears for the sake of giving us back our 
strength of will. I will say more : a good and 
thoughtful woman fulfils this office instinctively 
almost every day, and knows, whatever the cir- 
cumstances may be, how to drop the quiet, com- 
forting word in season which inspires us with love 
for a duty, an earnest purpose, life. 

Returning to the objection that a support of this 
kind would annihilate the power of will in us, that 
seems difficult to grant, even for men of excep- 
tional endowments. It must be admitted that we 
need more often to be ruled than to rule, and all 
the turmoil of our resolutions and our rages, all our 
caprices, inconstancies, discontents, only prove one 
thing : that our machinery is sadly in need of a 
competent manager. 

The fact is brought out in an infinite variety of 
ways ; but, as a general rule, the weaker a man's 
will is — that is, the more indefinite his personality 



THE WILL 255 

— the more certainly do the primitive instincts re- 
sume in him the place left vacant by the kindly 
sentiments. Shall we do ourselves harm, then, 
if we first calm these unruly sensations, and 
then patiently investigate the causes, great and 
small, physical and moral, of our weakness, 
and set ourselves to remove them one after 
another ? 

Sometimes it is the machinery itself that is worn 
out or broken, and then, to restore its power of 
movement, a quite exceptional effort is needed. In 
this case, indeed, the end will probably be the total 
subjection of the masculine will ; but how can that 
be avoided ? If a man is sick and compelled to 
keep his bed, can he lay the blame on his nurse ? 
Now, it is abundantly evident that the will is subject 
to real diseases ; 1 in particular, paralysis of the will, 
which attacks people in other respects perfectly 
healthy : a lesion in the communications between 
the intelligence and the activities. The sufferers are 
perfectly conscious of their plight : one of them, 
after his cure, thus explained his condition to Dr. 
Esquirol : " The failure of activity arose from the 
fact that my sensations were too feeble to exert any 
influence on my will." Another said that he felt 
quite sound, except that every action lacked the 

1 See Ribot, The Maladies of the Will; and Jules Payot, The 
Training of the Will, 



256 THE ART OF LIFE 

sensation proper to it and the pleasure that should 
accompany it. 1 

Such conditions are developed more easily than 
might be imagined among people either over- 
refined or naturally apathetic. No brain, however 
well organised it may appear, but is sometimes 
crossed by wild impulses, which are spurned by 
the will ; but sometimes even sound and vigorous 
brains have empty compartments in which the 
will is inoperative, leaving the field free to local 
weaknesses. 

I admit that in these cases, in which the phe- 
nomena are almost entirely physiological, the co- 
operation of sentiment is inevitably degraded to a 
corresponding impotence ; this, too, almost wholly 
physical. The strongest affection cannot but shrink 
into itself, becoming for the nonce a sort of 
suggestion or hypnotism. Such a love, alas ! is 
now only the shadow of itself ; but its goal is just 
as high — indeed, higher than ever. For instance, 
the sort of material relationship established between 
a hypnotist and his i subject' has often been de- 
scribed. The will is enchained, the subject feels 
for his master a sort of love, reverential, profound, 
yet tyrannical, for the hypnotist has to keep his 
thoughts fixed on his subject, to watch him, and 
to remain constantly within reach. This very 
1 Ribot. 



THE WILL 257 

unwholesome dependence may disappear by degrees, 
merging either into a real affection or into hatred. 
This malady exists, without question : the poor 
creature subject to it becomes, as it were, a mere 
piece of machinery whirling in space. But who 
would seriously seek to base a theory of sensibility 
on this frightful derangement of the physical appa- 
ratus ? 

Lord, Thou didst teach us that, ignorant as we 
are, we should speak all tongues : that, knowing 
nothing, we should teach all nations, lisping in 
their ears that sacred word, that word of thunder, 
1 Love ' ! Lord, each time Thou dost rise again 
within us, each time a beautiful idea pierces us with 
a shaft of flame, and revives the dull ashes of 
our dead life, Thou appearest first to woman ! This 
was in days of old Thy resurrection to Thyself, as 
if the miracle of love were very Thee ! And from 
the lips of women, sowers of sensual pleasure, Thou 
didst bring the fruit of grace. Was she so lovely, 
she who saw Thee even as Thou didst leave the 
tomb ? I know not. But those words that fell 
from her lips, those tears that coursed down her 
cheeks, those rays that flashed from her eyes, those 
perfumes poured forth by her hands, that wealth of 
hair which flowed like a garment about her and 
enwrapped Thy feet — all these were the gift of the 



258 THE ART OF LIFE 

soul — the art by whose aid Will rises from the ashes 
of a woman's heart. 

Princes and priests had set their seal upon Thy 
tomb. So likewise does the world : it sets its seal 
on human things, but all that is divine in man 
passes through the stone. And verily this divine 
part is pure, resplendent : it is the true man. 

The religious people, on the other hand, who 
would fain build life up on virtue alone, and mis- 
trust the beautiful as a perilous lure, and love in 
general as a weakness — even they are forced into 
inconsistency and the acknowledgment that, after all, 
love is the chief factor in the true development of 
the will. Set your affections upon high things, on 
God Himself ; lay down your arms at the feet of the 
Divine passion, and your will shall be a fortress 
impregnable. " To love is the great, the only con- 
cern. We make all things stepping-stones to love, 
and if all else fails, we love, and love is enough." 1 

1 Olle-Laprune. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND 

ACTION 

" The hours have wings, and rise towards the 
Author of time to recount to him the use we 
make of them. All our prayers cannot per- 
suade one of them to return or to slacken its 
pace. The squanderings of each minute are 
testimonies accumulated against us on high. 
Surely, if we thought of that, we should not 
suffer them to depart save with better tidings ; 
nor should we permit them to fly away with 
empty hands, or else laden with perilous in- 
struction." 

" Wer immer strebend, sich bemiith, 
Den konnen wir erlosen." 1 — Goethe. 

We must act through love, and for love's sake. 
The will would be nugatory if we did not act. I 
do not say that we should fuss and fume : what is 
required is a higher activity, controlled by reason, 
actuated by love, directed by the will : in other 
words, purposeful and well employed. But we 
gain nothing by being too anxious to economise 
life, by sipping at it too leisurely : it is then like a 
potion becoming more and more unpalatable in the 
medicine-chest ; and after all, if you do get four times 

I 1 " He that is ever panting in restless endeavour, him we can 
redeem."] 

259 



260 THE ART OF LIFE 

as much into life in Paris as in certain provincial 
townlets, you do not die there four times as fast. 

" What am I to do, then ? " some one will ask. 
My dear Madam, simply make use of your faculties. 

The pleasure of action is a pleasure of power: 
mainly physical in youth, it gradually becomes 
intellectual as the animal in us wanes. 

If we are only capable of physical activity — well, 
invite us to go horse-riding ; let us be toreadors or 
rope-dancers ; what does it matter ? — but don't let 
us sit still in idle dreaming, or enslaved in bondage 
to a mechanical life : eating, gambling, scandal- 
mongering, and so forth. 

If we are capable of wrestling with science and 
thought, set us face to face with intellectual things. 

Not that we need surrender ourselves to them 
body and soul. The thing is, to love art for life's 
sake, and not life for art's sake. If we hear a piece 
of music, for instance, either its intellectual effect 
ceases with the sound, or it leaves us a simple 
emotion which we carry away with us. Don't let 
us strive to manufacture an interest in art, but to 
strengthen and illuminate our life. 

Unhappily, either from apathy, love of pleasure, 
ignorance, jealousy, or some other cause, there are 
not a few women who extinguish rather than shed 
light. To have extinguished their husband is a 
triumph for them, and they do so with the most 



ACTION 261 

artless candour. They fancy they are doing him a 
service by reducing him to their own stature. I 
spoke of jealousy. There are also more women 
than we suspect who are jealous of their husband's 
activity, and would fain have him tied to their 
apron-strings. 

The real victory would have been to urge him 
to follow his bent. What would be impossible to 
an activity impregnated with love ? The field of 
human activity is boundless ; and when a man 
gives love, devotion, and the noble pleasure pro- 
duced by intellectual activity a place above his 
profession or the exigences of life, his work is 
doubled in value. 

If a man does not know and does not care what 
his bent is, his wife should not hesitate to take him 
by the hand and lead him. Why not direct him 
towards a high object, it matters not what — social 
work, for instance, or even an ambition ? Ambi- 
tion is a vexatious and baneful counsellor when 
its only aim is worldly success. It may become 
a wholesome and salutary motive if an affection 
is its reward ; it then takes a rightful place in the 
scheme of life. Charity has such a place ; it has 
been well pointed out by Mr. Robert Woods and 
the Comte d'Haussonville that charity is not to be 
considered as a social luxury, nor even as a mere 
service to humanity, but as a real function of the 



262 THE ART OF LIFE 

social economy — I will add, a necessity of the 
individual life. It is par excellence the function 
of love. Now, society can never be saved by 
legislative enactments, as politicians maintain. " It 
is saved by persons ; what is needed is the personal 
influence, the continuous intimacy, the individual 
interest taken in human affairs by those who have 
drunk of the fountains of knowledge, and acquired 
the philosophic and historic breadth of mind 
necessary if we are really to love our neighbours. 
Knowledge thus acquired . . . will but furnish one 
stimulant the more to natural pity: each of us 
without exception must be an apostle." l 

The man led by a worthy ambition of love has 
nothing in common with the vulgar intriguer ; he 
is a worker-bee as compared with a drone. He is 
an open-handed giver, and scorns to ask of others. 
He loves good men, even among the humble, and 
hates bad men, even among the powerful. He will 
be led by any feminine hand to the active morality 
of self-devotion, apart from calculations and theories, 
and thus the bond of charity will be created, which 
is the unstinted outpouring of love. 

Leading him thus, Madam, you would end by 
provoking the man, formerly immersed in his pro- 
fession or his idleness, to acts of enthusiasm. 

1 I borrow this excellent passage from Madame Bentzon {Les 
Amiricaines chez elles). 



ACTION 263 

You will talk to him in the evening ; you will 
powerfully impress him by showing him the human 
verities on their fairest sides ; you will get him to 
read history in order to carry him away from him- 
self. You will demolish his fixed ideas. 

The art comes quite spontaneously. The English, 
a people essentially practical, but original and in- 
dividualistic, have given us the most vigorous thinkers 
of the past century. Make people think, and action 
will follow idea. Many illustrious examples will 
occur to you : Madame de la Sabliere, for instance, 
and the way she kept that simple soul La Fontaine 
at w r ork. Was she a genius ? Probably not. Witty ? 
I do not know. But it is very certain that she had 
taste, and what is still more, good-nature. It is not 
unlikely that we may find in the delicate, suave, 
artlessly simple style of the fabulist many a trace of 
his desire to please that lady. Still, we must not 
exaggerate the importance of feminine guidance, 
and I am not unaware that literature for ladies has 
never been very successful. But I repeat that, in a 
general way, women are absolutely responsible for 
the moral and intellectual governance of society. 
To begin with, novels are written for them ; without 
them, the theatre would not exist ; they read, buy, 
listen, criticise ; consequently, they are at least in- 
directly responsible for all the shameful rubbish of 
the day. But further, their direct opinions and 



264 THE ART OF LIFE 

decrees cannot be neglected. It is for them to 
polish men, and to create an atmosphere of refine- 
ment and peace, in default of which the most 
vigorous minds will always lack something. 

Even if they exercise no direct influence except 
on one man, their husband, this is sufficient, for the 
ideas of a man, however small his intellectual en- 
dowment, quickly spread. 

To love well and work well — that is the simple 
formula for leading a pure and strong life, and for 
developing one's activity. 

Earnest work gives us a value in our own eyes, 
and, consequently, peace of mind : it weds us, so 
to speak, to ourselves, and saves us from that 
double-mindedness to which feeble or excitable 
natures are subject. If you drink out of a glass, 
it becomes empty ; if you drink at the spring itself, 
you will never exhaust it. 

But none of these virtues is inherent in work 
itself: we saw in the first pages of this book that 
work is a mechanical thing ; however pleasant it 
may be, however much loved, it has to become 
impregnated with the qualities of affection ; that is, 
it has to create, and to bestow. 

To create ! Men of gloom and pessimism are 
impotent folk — people of passive sensations. They 
believe themselves to be fatigued, overwrought ; 
living a collective existence, submerged in the mass, 



ACTION 265 

they have no opinions, they become extinct. It 
behoves you to teach them that life consists in doing 
individual work, that happiness does not proceed 
solely from investments : inspire them with energy 
and make them self-productive. 

To bestow ! For it is a strange law that our 
labour, to become fruitful, must be transmitted 
through others. Every effort of will is relative in 
character, an adaptation to our surroundings, then 
an act in which other people are concerned. Man 
is happy for his own sake, but by means of others. 
The Christian idea of happiness is, not to be 
ministered unto, but to minister, even to the length 
of sacrificing one's own life a ransom for many. 

It is easy to see how deadening is the lust of gain, 
and how subdued to the tyranny of their surround- 
ings are the people who are too well served. 

Love, on the contrary, works wonders with noth- 
ing : spontaneous in origin, it attains to a sublimity 
of self-devotion. And, what is a still finer thing, it 
faces with a light heart all the toils and sorrows it 
encounters. Not that it renders the burden a light 
one, but it softens it and rejoices to bear it. Were 
I required to define the happy life, I should call it 
'a pleasant tiredness.' The same spirit inspired 
Margaret, the sister of Francis I, in the choice of 
her admirable motto, Jamais oisive ni melancolique} 

1 [' Never idle nor dull.'] 



266 THE ART OF LIFE 

An old and pious legend tells how the Virgin 
appeared to St. Elizabeth of Hungary and gave her 
this precept of life : " Love God, love your neighbour 
as yourself (that is, of course, the good in him), hate 
your enemy." And, in truth, we must not shrink 
from the lash of opposition ; without it we should 
never advance, but crawl sluggards. 



CHAPTER THE THIRD 

JOY 

" Ofttimes my body became so light that 
it lost its ponderosity, sometimes to such a 
degree that I no longer felt my feet touching 
the ground. So long as the body is in its 
ecstasy, it remains as dead, and often is abso- 
lutely powerless to act. . . . Though in gene- 
ral one does not lose consciousness, yet it has 
befallen me to be totally reft of it : this was a 
rare state, and of no long duration. Most 
often, consciousness is retained : but one ex- 
periences a strange agitation ; and though 
outward activity is impossible, one does not 
cease to hear : it is as a confused sound com- 
ing from afar." — St. Theresa. 

But, I shall be told, even with the measured activity 
of which we have just spoken, it is not always pos- 
sible to move forward. There are moments when 
one feels an imperious need of standing still : 
" What ! " cries Browning somewhere, 1 " is there 
no deed which, once accomplished, will stay the 
course of time ? Is there no means of wresting 
from earth the secret of heaven ? " 

Work, you say : do something : that is all very 
well ; but, lo ! when the burst is over, the life 

1 [I have failed to trace the source.] 
267 



268 THE ART OF LIFE 

given, we are left empty and more unhappy than 
before, nay, positively ill : what have we gained ? — 
illusions of joy and greatness, then a goodness, a 
benevolence, and a generosity carried perhaps to 
the extreme. These are the very symptoms of 
mental paralysis and insanity ! I am poisoned. 
Alcohol, opium, morphia, tobacco, were all at my 
disposal — and I chose love ! The more fool I ! x 

Why not give it up, then, to dream of joy, and 
settle down to a comfortable life of take all and 
give none ? 

That is the teaching of Hindoo philosophy : first, 
to rise above sin, and to see clearly into the nature 
of things ; that is what I did in the first stage of my 
life. Then, to relinquish the judgment, and pre- 
serve only the pleasure of inward satisfaction : that 
is what I did in the second. At the mystic altitude 
at which I have arrived, this ancient philosophy 
now counsels me to enjoy, gently, and as vaguely 
as possible, a physical and moral well-being in all 
the comfort of peace and far niente. 

What good is memory, and even indifference 
itself, if it be conscious ? To exist without pleasure 
and without pain — what could be better ? 2 

This is a very tempting philosophy. But no, 
it is an impossibility ! At the very moment of 
my writing these lines, a rushing mighty wind is 

1 Dr. de Fleury. ' Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire. 



JOY 269 

blowing before my windows, through the tops of the 
oaks and firs. The broad pond is in commotion. 
There is quivering, clashing, rumbling all around : 
wind and water and trees — all are in agitation, 
forceful, full of life, and the earth itself seems to 
rejoice in the harsh music of its phenomenal palpita- 
tion. Tell me, can I live outside this life ? Should 
I be less grand, less resolute, less sincere than these 
profound realities that make so much for sim- 
plicity ? Should I not flow on like this brook ? It 
may be that I have over-tasked my activity ; sought 
too sedulously for sentiments precious and rare, un- 
published impressions : that my liquor has always 
been too thin, and my glass too small. There are 
hours of lassitude and despondency : but these are 
not the hours of true joy. Let as delve out for 
our sentiments, in fresh air and bright sunshine, 
a safe and pleasant channel, in which they may 
flow a clear and calm and smiling stream, impeded 
neither by the briars nor by the flowers along the 
banks. 



CHAPTER THE FOURTH 

DESIRE 

" Charity ought always to increase. Power 
grows with love : the exercise of love purifies 
the heart in teaching it to love more and 
more. God is within us when we love." — 
Bossuet. 

" In pleasure I regret desire." — Goethe. 

" Life gives a relish for life ; enthusiasm 
augments the faculty and the need of enthusi- 
asm ; exertion strengthens us." — Ricardo. 

Fortunately, happiness undergoes transforma- 
tions, and appears to us in changing lights, like 
the revolving rays from a lighthouse. For our 
appetite for change is the root of all our dis- 
quietudes. We want new plays, new novels, new 
fashions in dress — no matter what, so long as it be 
new ; we demand novelty also in the moral life. 
And this being so, there is nothing more immoral 
than to represent virtue under various forms of 
monotony, as some good souls do. 

We are creatures of change, of ebb and flow, and 
everything around us is subject to like intermis- 
sions with ourselves. Do we not see, year by year, 
Nature dying, to revive again in fulness of time ? 
Why is vitality intenser on the mountains than in 



DESIRE 271 

the plains — these carnations of heightened colour ; 
these pansies, pricked like stars upon a smiling 
earth ; the streamlets singing as they flow ; the 
frolic wind ? It is because Death's sleep is here 
longer : it will more rapidly return ; and conse- 
quently life is brighter, the flowers are fresher, 
everything is young. 

We too spend a part of our life in sleep, like all 
animals endowed with a measure of psychic exist- 
ence : we have two lives, the one obscure, buried 
in animality, haunted by vague memories, by pre- 
sentiments perhaps ; the other born anew every 
morning with the light, and worthless unless sus- 
tained by the first. And our actions, our affections, 
our emotions — how these too wax and wane ! 
Even did we yearn with an ardent yearning for 
lingering joys, eternal joys, can we prevent enforced 
separations, ingratitudes, forgetfulnesses — still less 
absences and death ? * 

It is this that cripples our will and poisons our 
pleasures. Our life is like the whirl of a squirrel 
in a cage. We pass from obliviousness to hope. 
The objects of our love are fragile : our love itself 
is not. The agonies of despair which are due to 

1 " Life to-day is painful, full of dissatisfaction and wretchedness. 
There are only two issues possible : to suppress desire and be reabsorbed 
in inaction ; or to exalt desire, aiming at the life eternal. As Solon 
said, only when dying does one know if one has been happy." — M. 
de Fleury. 



272 THE ART OF LIFE 

this fact, and which cause some men to oscillate 
so strangely between the lowest carnal sensations 
and seemingly religious or even mystical sensations, 
arise habitually from their not having followed our 
method : they say that all love but the material is 
an idle dream, and then expect to derive inex- 
haustible happiness from an object whose season 
is so quickly past. 

Let us remember, on the other hand, that, little 
by little, we have risen in the scale of sentiments. 

With the expansion of our individuality, we have 
felt the need of sharing it. Thence proceeds mar- 
riage, then the collective family feeling — a wider 
sentiment which links us to ancestors whose life 
we regard ourselves, up to a certain point, as 
sharing, and to children in whom we hope to live 
again. Woman has wrought this miracle upon us. 
She has followed it with a second : she has raised 
us from this collectivism, still a personal senti- 
ment, to another and a still wider sentiment, the 
sentiment of social life, when, by the agency of 
work rilled with love and charity, we have found a 
joy for our own souls. 

But we find now that this no longer suffices ; it 
no longer fills our heart. We long for other things, 
because what we have loved is as circumscribed, 
as perishable, as fallacious, and as fluctuating as 
ourselves. We never reach the end of our love, 



DESIRE 273 

and to satisfy it we should have to rise from the 
social life to the transcendent life — absolute com- 
munism. In the words of a Father of the Church : 
"The love of our neighbour is the cradle of the 
love of God." 

" Malgre moi, Pinfini me tourmente." l 

Doubtless the infinite troubled the woman of love, 
the Samaritan who had had seven husbands ; and 
Christ, piercing with His searching glance the 
secret of this sorely battered soul, brought her to 
her knees with His promise of a water of which 
" whosoever drinketh shall never thirst." 

The thirst that we experience is called desire, 
and thus either life is wholly destitute of art, or 
its art leads us in the end to pursue our will 
transformed into desire. 

The sole joy of life is to love, and to love our 
surroundings. The only inexhaustible joy is an 
inexhaustible love, a love so great that, while fill- 
ing life, it remains always a desire : " The supreme 
felicity will consist in the eternal possession of what 
we love." 2 " Life will be perfectly happy when it 
is eternal." 3 For the moment, we experience im- 
pressions rather than joys ; and these sensations 
wear us out, or can only quicken our life if we 
remove all ideas of precariousness, cessation, death, 

1 Alfred de Musset. 
2 St. Bonaventure, Soliloquy. 3 St. Augustine. 

S 



274 THE ART OF LIFE 

and seal them with an illusion of permanence. 
Then only will they take their true rank. Now, 
as, for us, there is no such thing as permanence, 
we must with every pleasure mingle a desire. 
Hence desire is the law of happiness and love. 

Happy, then, are they in whom desire springs 
eternal — that is, who go gently through life without 
demanding too much from it, and who do not 
wither and stale their happiness all at once. Hesitate 
to say, " I am happy." That cannot be. Say, " I 
desire to be happy." The grass of the fields in- 
vites the life-giving rain from heaven : night is 
necessary to day. 

Again, every religion imposes on man a number 
of voluntary renunciations — ' mortifications,' as 
they are very justly called. Herein lies the 
guarantee of happiness, the lightning-rod of life ; 
herein is the assurance of joy, the necessary inter- 
mittence. 

For desire itself would be ineffectual and would 
speedily tire us if it were fruitless. It requires a 
satisfaction, whose name is progress. Human love is 
afflicted with so radical a restlessness that it cannot 
fix itself : satisfaction is not found in the good, 
but in the better. We are happy when we leave 
behind a less good, and look forward to a greater ; 
when we remember vanished sorrows, and hope 
for a joy ; when we see ourselves in a position 



DESIRE 275 

superior to our neighbour's, or to a former position 
of our own. All things urge us upward. 

This desire is a source of anguish unless it is 
blended with love and faith ; it is a veritable joy if 
so well nourished by faith and charity as to be- 
come a hope. Hope, then, is our true joy. Watch 
a dog as it starts off for the chase : how it leaps 
and gambols and licks its master's hand ; how 
full of delight ! The huntsmen ride off, and the 
joy of the hounds is moderated and restrained, as 
though it were already conscious of its end. This 
is also the history of the joy of children in ex- 
pectation of a toy, of the lover in presence of his 
future bride, of us all. The fastidious like to 
tantalise their appetite a little, to rise from table 
while still hungry. Some women only love the 
men who appear able to do without them, and who 
do not immoderately insist on present realities. 

How many desires are left with us by a pleasant 
reminiscence ! 

The Greek mob cried out to a nobleman whose 
two sons had had the good luck to carry off on 
the same day the two great prizes of their athletic 
games : il Die, Diagoras, for thou canst not end 
by becoming a god ! " What indeed was left for 
him to wish for? Nothing. So nothing remained 
but to die. 

Hope we must needs always cherish. Just as 



276 THE ART OF LIFE 

in the economic world progress is the rule of life, 
so love forges an immense chain binding us to 
Life itself — Life immanent, inexhaustible. The 
soul's highest desire is a prayer, for the end of 
love is God. 



PART THE FIFTH 
THE HIGHER LIFE 



CHAPTER THE FIRST 

THE ASSAULT OF SORROW 

" I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will 
prove thee with mirth : therefore enjoy plea- 
sure. And behold, this also was vanity." 

"There is a time to be born, and a time 
to die ; a time to plant, and a time to pluck 
up that which is planted." — Ecclesiastes 
ii. i ; iii. 2. 

" Sleep, sleep on ! forget thy pain. . . . 

Forget thy life and love. . . . 

Forget the world's dull scorn ; 
Forget lost health, and the divine 

Feelings which died in youth's brief morn ; 
And forget me, for I can never 
Be thine." — Shelley. 

It would be an exquisite dream always to desire 
what we have ; unhappily it is a dream. We do 
not always meet with happiness, but we never 
escape sorrow. At the allotted moment our house 
of joy topples down, or is hotly assailed. Life 
resembles a cathedral : first, the massive crypt, 
dark, subterranean ; then the lightsome nave, soar- 
ing into the sky, filled with light and colour, but 
artfully sustained on the outside by graceful but- 
tresses of sentiment, slenderly built, and at the mercy 

279 



280 THE ART OF LIFE 

of many a pelting storm. The higher it rises, the 
more is life exposed to suffering and woe ; the 
higher a person finds himself placed, the more is 
it his mission to suffer. And nothing is more 
logical : sorrow is an emotion — betokening weak- 
ness, but yet an emotion ; and in consequence, its 
action upon the more exquisite and extensive sensi- 
bilities is all the more pronounced. The higher 
our conception of happiness, the more we must 
expect to suffer : sorrow has all the characteristics 
of joy in the inverse direction ; it sets the nervous 
system in action, to ruin it ; it appeals to our 
faculties of mental association and memory, to 
effect their dissolution ; it produces fear instead of 
desire. And our tears are ever flowing : the tears of 
sorrow are more abundant and more beautiful than 
those of joy, love, passion : they culminate in the 
sob, that distressful spasm which is the honour of 
the human race, for the animals know it not. 

Alas ! I have felt the jealousy of God. It has 
smitten me to the earth ; and nothing is left to 
me. I have lost my all, seen all my loved ones 
die ; I mourn in anguish, and am nothing but 
sorrow. 

It is here that art seems to break down. How 
shall I find consolation ? How can I love a life 
so wretched ? 

They tell me that, were we stronger, we should 



THE ASSAULT OF SORROW 281 

not suffer ; were we wiser, we should know how 
to abolish suffering. 

I read in books that the little troubles add variety 
to life, and that great troubles eclipse many of the 
lesser : that sorrow is a mere word ; that we ought 
to rise superior to it, never heed it. These, and 
many another fine sentiment ! 

But I find no solace there. " Is patience in 
affliction happiness ? " * On Calvary itself, where 
Sorrow was glorified, I hear the cry : " My God, 
my God ! why hast Thou forsaken Me ? " 

1 St. Augustine, City of God, Book xiv. 



CHAPTER THE SECOND 

THE MALADIES OF SENSIBILITY 

Sorrow, nevertheless, imposes on us the necessity 
of defending ourselves. Already, in dealing with 
the weaknesses of the will, we have seen how 
necessary it is to combine all our physical and 
moral forces into a perfect unity. 

So is it also with the special maladies of desire 
— fixed ideas, irritant cravings, optimistic dreams. 
Still more strongly is the concentration of our 
forces imposed upon us in face of the deep-seated 
maladies of sensibility itself — in face of Sorrow, 
the great foe to Will and Desire. Ah ! how diffi- 
cult a science is the practical accomplishment of 
this union ! But we shall be permitted to state 
some of its elementary principles, for this science 
is essential to the art of life. There are times 
when life shrinks from contact with any amiable 
sentiment, and falls in ruins. At such times a 
vast effort is needed to reconstruct it, and to 
restore its capacity for happiness. 

It is wrong, in general, to divorce moral pain 
from physical pain. There are two pains, but 



THE MALADIES OF SENSIBILITY 283 

they are twins, and the science of the one may 
well be the science of the other : they have a 
like mechanism/ almost identical causes, the same 
forms of expression, the same effect. Unlike joy 
and happiness, which spring from the expansion 
of life and love, every pain, physical or moral, 
arises from a restriction, a constriction, and 
displays itself by a loss of moral or physical 
pleasure. 

According to the apparent nature of the ill from 
which we suffer, we consult either a physician or 
a moralist. Neither can, nor indeed ought, to 
effect anything but a partial cure, proportionate 
to their competence. And yet, as Bishop Brook 
says, u there is but one life, the life eternal," 
and this synthetic life cannot be sustained by 
methods wholly physiological, nor by methods 
wholly moral, as the l Christian scientists ' of 
America would have us believe. 2 Yes, there is 
but one life : in other words, in addition to 
pharmacy and philosophy, both infinitely useful, 
another science is required, to envisage the being 
as a whole, in its equilibrium and its synthesis, 
and to tend it on both sides at once. Let us call 
this science l moral medicine.' 

1 Ribot. 

2 See The Modern Expression of the Oldest Philosophy, by Katherine 
Coolidge. 



284 THE ART OF LIFE 

To make this clear, let us take for an example a 
mixed malady — fear. 

Fear, including its manifold varieties (fright, 
anxiety, sadness, and so on, down to timidity and 
indolence), is a malady at once physical and moral ; 
a simultaneous and reciprocal depression. The will 
suffers a sort of paralysis, and instinct takes the 
upper hand ; physically, the circulation of the blood 
is retarded, the cheeks pale, the eyes become 
fixed, the constricted blood-vessels grip the heart, 
the muscles twitch, the digestive apparatus gives 
way. 

These are the general symptoms. To deal with 
the matter more specifically, let us dwell for a little 
on one of the varieties of fear — melancholy, often 
endemic in the old countries. Although sorrow 
has sometimes been celebrated as beautiful, "and 
melancholy extolled as sublime, sorrow is a malady 
of depression, which may arise from personal un- 
thrift or from racial degeneracy. Even though it 
be latent, it is accompanied by a physical decadence 
more or less marked, and by a moral decadence 
not less remarkable. The sensibility seems dimi- 
nished, as if certain recesses in it, containing old 
recollections that one would fain forget, were walled 
up ; memories fallen there like a heap of dead 
leaves, but not yet dead enough to become the 
fertilisers of a new vitality. The memory, when 



THE MALADIES OF SENSIBILITY 285 

interrogated, instead of associating ideas according 
to its normal function, dissociates them. And it is 
even a matter for self-congratulation if the sensi- 
bility and the memory perform their functions 
badly, for they might not act at all. A wit once 
said that love is composed of " big words before, 
little words during, and rough words after." In 
this case, indeed, the sensibility and the memory 
subsist and are but perverted ; the terrible thing is 
silence. 

The effect on the will is naturally to lessen its 
resilience; and weakness of will is often the only 
visible sign of the diseased condition. There are 
many women, sad and unsatisfied in soul, who are 
so habituated to their sadness that they succeed in 
hiding it, and even fail to realise it themselves. 
Their malady kills them ; sometimes it kills also 
those about them, and yet its only symptoms are 
a certain physical inertness or a certain moral 
instability. 

The first thing required of the science of ' moral 
medicine,' and by no means the easiest, is to 
form an accurate diagnosis of the disease, and 
I venture to say that it would be a fatal error 
in such cases to mistrust the ministry of women. 
Their quickness, their subtlety of attention, their 
gentleness of spirit, enable them, at every 
passing moment, to perceive many of the slight 



286 THE ART OF LIFE 

and fleeting but decisive symptoms. And even 
should they not care to cultivate the science 
farther, nothing is easier to them than to drop 
a little balm into the moral wounds they dis- 
cern. 



CHAPTER THE THIRD 

THE SOURCES OF SORROW 

"Every one that doeth evil hateth the 
light."— St. John iii. 20. 

The nature of the evil once admitted, it remains to 
determine its origin. Here is a creature of gloom ; 
whence does his trouble proceed ? 

Physiologists at once point out his physical de- 
fects ; his breathing is bad, his heart or his stomach 
is out of order. Here, they will tell us, are the 
sources of his gloom ; what he needs is to recu- 
perate his physical forces. 

Yes, indeed, moral gloom does often proceed 
from a morbid lack of tone, or from so-called 
cerebral disturbances, which are themselves due 
to disorder in the organs of emotion — the liver, 
the stomach, the bowels. A convalescent, gripped 
by the tedium of inactivity, even though free from 
mental worry and disquietude, will only regain his 
spirits with his strength. In these cases, clearly, 
the chief reliance must be placed on physical treat- 
ment. 

There are likewise, apart from settled gloom, a 

287 



288 THE ART OF LIFE 

host of other moral debilities in which a principally 
physiological character may be recognised ; for in- 
stance, the melancholy of certain young girls, the 
mental torpor affecting people at certain mountain 
altitudes, the nervousness of Napoleon at Waterloo, 
the mental paralysis accompanying sick headache, 
and so on. 

Dr. Bouchard has shown how closely indolence 
and lack of moral energy are allied to a sluggish 
digestion, which may indeed be the prime cause. 
Jealousy is a weakness of the same nature. Many 
troubles are due to defective respiration ; the 
croupier at Monaco was clever enough to make 
his fortune by keeping the windows around the 
gamblers hermetically closed. It is very certain 
that conditions of this sort are mitigated by sun- 
shine, fresh air, cold water, rather than by good 
advice. Far be it from me to offer counsel to the 
President of the Chamber of Deputies ; but I fancy 
that during a ' scene ' he would obtain better results 
from copious draughts of air, and, as a last re- 
source, plentiful douches of cold water, than by 
ringing his bell, setting the ushers bawling, or let- 
ting fly shafts of his wit. 

However that may be, no one will dispute that 
certain physical conditions arise from moral causes, 
and that certain maladies can only be effectively 
treated by persevering with moral means. That has 



THE SOURCES OF SORROW 289 

always been recognised in various classical cases — 
nervous maladies, loss of memory, neurasthenia, 
paralysis, hysteria in various forms ; and science 
will learn more and more to apply the same treat- 
ment to other diatheses — diabetes, for instance, 
hitherto considered purely physical ; irritability, 
which is a moral ailment, due to utter weariness of 
an uncongenial occupation. 

There is one cause of feebleness generally re- 
garded as incurable, namely, old age. Certainly, 
we cannot alter our age, and age puts a terribly 
different complexion on things : at forty, at sixty, 
'tis as though the curtain were rising on a new act. 
But is there on that account any need to despair of 
happiness, and to sacrifice this art of life ? I shall 
be told : "Yes, since happiness consists in progress. 
If we could begin with old age and end with youth, 
it would be charming ; but our end is decay." 

My answer will be : It is just a change of equi- 
librium, that is all ; and in reality the question is 
not merely one of arithmetic. I call old, whoever 
feels the void within ; and young, whoever has a 
reserve of enthusiasm. If we have been wise 
enough in youth to be a little old, that is, not to 
make too heavy demands upon our physical vitality, 
it is no merit in us men to have reached a ripe old 
age, and we do not lose very much : our heart's 



290 THE ART OF LIFE 

youthfulness does but expand. With women it is 
not so simple a matter. At forty, some women take 
their courage in both hands and proceed to live as 
men do. How wrong they are ! A few white hairs 
prevent no one, not even a woman, from attaining a 
charming and efficient philosophy. If we turn over 
the delicate leaves of our book of memory, perhaps 
the names most deeply graven there will not be the 
names of very young women ! And on the other 
hand, we should vastly amaze some fair ladies not 
yet come to forty if we confessed that we find 
them old, because they have shrivelled souls, be- 
cause they are weak, worn-out creatures of routine, 
and the springs of life in them seem parched. " O 
God, who rejoiceth my youth!" is still lisped by 
the aged priest who has not lost touch with enthu- 
siasm and ideas. The women we prefer are, at 
bottom, those whom we respect. To respect what 
we love, and to enjoy with respect — that is always 
the art of the pure gourmet. He nurtures desire ! 



CHAPTER THE FOURTH 

A MORAL PHARMACOPCEIA 

" It is not the eye that beholds the beauties 
of the heavens, nor the ear that hears the 
sweetness of music : it is the soul that gathers 
them, and enjoys all the perceptions of the 
senses and the intelligence. The nobler and 
more excellent is the soul, the greater and 
the more delicious will be its perceptions and, 
in consequence, its joys." — Jeremy Taylor. 

The few indications we have given will perhaps 
appear somewhat unfruitful, though unhappily their 
exactitude can be recognised by every one. 

They lead to the conclusion that happiness in 
this world is subject to rude assault ; desire ends 
in a dream of sensibility which neither soul nor 
body is strong enough to support ; yet the idea of 
art is not destroyed, and sensibility still enters very 
largely even into the treatment of disease. 

In treating a disease, the first requisite is to allay 
pain as much as possible, then to suppress the 
physical and moral nutriments of the disorder, and 
finally to repair the general vitality, in such a way 
as to restore the body to its normal equilibrium. 

In all these matters, if we carefully observe the 

291 



292 THE ART OF LIFE 

synthesis of the individual, we shall find that sensi- 
bility plays its part. 

We all know that physical pain is lulled by 
anaesthetics, which suppress local sensibility, and 
sometimes the conscious personality itself. But 
there are no permanent anaesthetics. On the 
other hand, while we have no chloroform for 
moral pain, we have permanent anaesthetics of 
more or less efficacy. Consequently, in the actual 
state of science, little can be done for sorrow ex- 
cept to apply physical remedies with a view to 
immediate relief, and moral remedies for perma- 
nent recovery. 

This arises in great measure from the difficulty 
and danger involved in trying to obliterate the 
moral sensibility, since this would be simply add- 
ing weakness to weakness. It is necessary to 
inflame, I had almost said to intoxicate, the moral 
sensibility in order to save it from itself. We must 
be so filled and occupied that no room is left for the 
impressions that are to be destroyed ; impressions 
must be set in conflict, and against those that are 
painful must be let loose other impressions, if 
possible more violent still. And then the moral 
action can swamp even the physical nature. 

A soldier is not conscious of his wound while the 
storm of battle rages. 

There have been some ardent natures possessed 



A MORAL PHARMACOPCEIA 293 

of the strength to act thus in cold blood upon them- 
selves. The love of God has produced marvels 
among the martyrs. St. Francis of Assisi, accord- 
ing to the narrative of St. Bonaventure, smilingly 
submitted to a most painful operation, oblivious to 
suffering by virtue of his passionate love of God. 
The Duke of Urbino, Raphael's charming friend, 
supported himself in his last agony by reciting fine 
passages from Virgil. 

It is quite clear that no reasoning can prevail 
over pain. Sensibility alone can mitigate it or 
help one to support it, so that one may for- 
mulate this aphorism : Blessed are those who 
know how to enjoy, because they know how to 
suffer ! 

This truth has recently been widely recognised, 
and in Russia and France a number of physiologists 
have conceived the idea of making practical use of 
music for giving physical and moral relief to certain 
sick persons. This is no new theory ; it was known 
among the ancient Greeks and the ancient Mexicans ; 
it flourished also during the whole course of the 
Middle Ages. St. Francis of Assisi, who is con- 
stantly available as an example, was sinking one 
day under the burden of a multiplicity of suffer- 
ings: it occurred to him to invoke music's aid 
"in rekindling joy in his soul." But his own 
rule forbade the enjoyment of music : on the night 



294 THE ART OF LIFE 

following he fancied he heard the strains of angels' 
songs, and he returned to life. 1 

Memlinc, Carpaccio, and many another artist 
depict the martyrs sustained in their physical tribu- 
lations by a celestial music. The Duchess of Orleans, 
mother of Louis XII, when racked by the pains 
of travail, had her musicians stationed about her 
bed. No one but knows by experience how, in a 
time of anguish, a noble religious song brings true 
calm. 

Not long ago the newspapers related that, after 
the wreck of the excursion steamboat Stella, a boat 
filled with passengers was adrift on the ocean in 
the night, without sails or oars. A lady had the 
idea and the courage to keep up her companions' 
spirits by singing sacred airs from the works of 
Mendelssohn. 

The second step in the cure consists in sup- 
pressing whatever is permanent food for sorrow. 
On the moral side this is a veritable work of 
surgical restoration. It is necessary to attack and 
destroy the injured parts — the memory, the faculty 
of comparison. Instinct lends its aid : loss of 
memory {amnesia) is a natural consequence of the 
most violent emotions. Forgetfulness, ignorance 
of the future, seclusion — these are the starting- 
points for the re-creation, the re-birth of a creature. 

1 His Life by St. Bonaveniure. 



A MORAL PHARMACOPOEIA 295 

His whole being must be taken possession of as 
completely as possible, in such a way that his life 
is encompassed, sustained, re-formed, until the day 
when he is born again. 

We have as yet no very sure method of adminis- 
tering forgetfulness. All that we know is that it 
is not right to kill the memory, nor even to put 
it too effectually to sleep, because a remembrance 
of the sorrow must remain in order to constitute 
happiness. "The state of redemption is a hundred 
times more precious than the state of innocence," 
was an excellent saying of St. Francis of Sales, 
not perhaps from the moral point of view, but 
certainly from the aesthetic standpoint, since happi- 
ness is born of progress. It is not right, then, to 
shatter the dolorous foundation of all life ; what 
is necessary is, gradually to replace the sorrowful 
recollection by the idea of things loved, and not 
to lose sight of the fact that the right treatment 
of moral maladies is, in the end, as Dr. Briquet 
said, their cure — in other words, happiness. The 
past once detested, life is then begun afresh, accord- 
ing to the principles we have stated. 

Of a thousand moral diseases, nine hundred and 
ninety-nine are characterised at bottom by a posi- 
tivist condition of soul and a loss of illusion. 

Step by step revive illusion, then love, then moral 
activity. By the agency of a few experiments in 



296 THE ART OF LIFE 

spiritual massage and friction a little enthusiasm 
will be engendered. 

This applies to maladies that are moral in origin. 

In regard to moral maladies that have a physical 
origin, the moral treatment, though now subsidiary, 
still has its importance. Every one knows how 
essential it is to cheer the sick, to restore to them 
love of life, desire, hope, confidence. 

In war twice as many wounded of the conquered 
army die as of the conquering army. A sick man 
who fancies himself cured is half way to recovery. 
Dr. Padioleau 1 relates the case of a lady who, 
though entirely cured, suffered a relapse when she 
learnt that she had been taken in by sham prescrip- 
tions. At Vichy, where the waters are indubitably 
of admirable strength, an old physician has often 
told me that the faith of his patients was one of 
his principal curative agents. 

A shock may be necessary. A vivid emotion of 
love, joy, fear, transforms a sick person. Paralytics 
have been known to escape from a fire, invalids 
to regain health through the return of a loved one 
or success in a lawsuit : examples abound. A 
physician of Montpellier, M. de Beauchene, in his 
book, De V Influence des affections de Vame sur les 
maladies nerveuses des femmes } published in 1781, 

1 De la midecine morale dans le traitement des maladies nerveuses, 
Paris, 1864. 






A MORAL PHARMACOPCEIA 297 

mentions cases which strike us as very curious 
to-day : a Frenchwoman who suddenly came out 
of a cataleptic trance on hearing some one say that 
she might marry the man she loved ; a Turkish 
woman who recovered because her doctor threat- 
ened her aloud with a physical operation then 
considered indecent ; a lady suffering from haemor- 
rhage, to whom her doctor said brusquely, "Is 
that it ? Come, then, I shall have to bleed you ! " 
As the lady was a trifle ingenuous, the haemorrhage 
ceased instantly. 

By such means people have almost raised the 
dead ! Remember that poor queen of England, 
who, given up by her physicians, was bidding a 
touching farewell to the king, her husband and 
lover : " At these words, she bedewed his hands 
with tears, which he thought her last. He clasped 
her hands, and, without dreaming that she might 
take him at his word, conjured her to live for love 
of him. Never had she disobeyed him ; and, for 
all the danger attending sudden emotion when one 
is between life and death, the transport of joy, 
which was like to have been fatal, saved her ; and 
this wonderful tenderness of the king had an effect 
for which not every one praised Heaven with equal 
fervour." 1 

At bottom the real infirmity of all these poor 

1 Hamilton. 



298 THE ART OF LIFE 

people was a feebleness of will. Their will required 
a wholesome touch of the whip. Since they were 
cured by an emotion, it is reasonable to suppose 
that they might have cured themselves. But no ; 
they were awaiting the stimulant of life — emotion. 

Nothing, then, is so valuable, even for certain 
physical ailments, as the bracing of the moral 
sensibility. 

Some people have great faith in work. Certainly 
work, both physical and mental, is a perfectly 
healthful occupation. Physical exercise clarifies 
the brain ; and intellectual culture is wonderfully 
conducive to longevity, even conferring on the 
body a sort of immunity : " Take a negro wrestler, 
and the most languishing of the fashionable ladies 
of Paris, and expose them to the same contagion ; 
it is on the negro that the bacillus of tuberculosis 
or the comma of cholera will pullulate." x 

The valuable and delightful thing about work is 
that it develops a man's personal life, and insulates 
him. It is, as it were, a hospice in the midst of 
physical contagions, a fortress in the midst of 
moral degeneration. But to imagine that it is a 
universal cure would be vast presumption. 

In states of fatigue or depression, states so com- 
mon to-day, the need of activity sometimes answers 
to a sort of mechanical agitation, which it is much 

1 Dr. de Fleury. 






A MORAL PHARMACOPOEIA 299 

better not to maintain. It would surely be doing 
a very bad turn to a feverish patient to give him 
a beefsteak instead of bark ! And the precise 
drawback of pure reason, the clear proof of the 
impossibility of relying upon that alone, is that at 
the first assault of sorrow it refuses its aid, and 
leaves us alone with sensibility. 



CHAPTER THE FIFTH 

THROUGH SORROW TO LOVE 

" Love is never idle ; but if it exists, it does 
great things ; if, on the contrary, it refuses to 
act, it is no longer love." — St. Gregory. 

"A great thing is love if reduced to its 
principle, if traced back to its origin, if steeped 
once more in its source ; and if it draws thence 
unceasingly all it needs, to flow on without 
interruption." — St. Bernard. 

This malady was the beginning of my soul's restora- 
tion : " No man knows himself so long as he has 
not suffered ! " * What value, I ask you, in the eyes 
of the man who will perhaps die in an hour, or the 
man who has just lost all that he loved — what value 
has the idea of his tailor, his interests, a hundred 
and one vanities ? Thenceforward vanity is for 
ever shattered, but the heart does but blossom again 
and again. We become tender, and calm, and 
noble ; passion resolves itself into tranquillity and 
gentleness ; around us we see with clear eyes the 
worthlessness of things ; the sentiment of a new 
life, a life of contemplation, defines itself. Sooner 
or later we are bound to die thus, in order to rise 

1 Alfred de Musset. 
300 



THROUGH SORROW TO LOVE 301 

again. The frail vessel of our heart seems to be 
broken, but only to fill itself anew with a larger 
love, the love which is Charity. The flower fades, 
but only to become a double flower. Savonarola 
turned monk in consequence of a grave moral 
malady, a disappointment in love ; and as Emilio 
Castelar tells us, " He believed that it was death to 
him, when in truth it was immortality." 

Here am I now convalescent, filled with the tender 
joy that sorrow has produced. I feel all the more 
superior to fortune in that I am manifestly weaker ; 
and why should I not raise a modest paean when I 
see that this torch of life, still flickering, still fragile, 
is uplifted by a hand far more robust than mine ? 

Then, a sort of divine grace encompasses our 
re-birth with charm and joy. Not that fatigue or 
weakness becomes a good, but since our happiness is 
entirely a matter of comparison, of progress, there is a 
delicious zest in the consciousness of being born, and 
then advancing, and in preparing for future activity : 

" Et Ton redevient doux de la toute-douceur ! 
La maladie est a ce point anemiante 
Qu'on prend un air de premiere communiante, 
Qu'on prend, au lieu de son coeur d'homme, un coeur de 

fleur, 
Un coeur de nenuphar dans une ville morte. . ." * 

1 Rodenbach. ["And one becomes sweet again with the all-sweetness. 
Sickness thins the blood so far that one becomes like a young girl 
going to first communion — one loses one's heart of man for a heart of 
flower — a nenuphar in a dead city."] 



302 THE ART OF LIFE 

Or rather the soul, but vapour still, floats and rises 
into the living ocean of heaven, carrying with it 
languidly the incense of our mortal dreams, and 
seeming to lose itself in the brightness ineffable. 

In olden days, the workshop in which souls were 
repaired was not to be found merely in the hospital ; 
they liked to have it in the full sunlight, upon a 
mountain peak, in some high monastery, a nest of 
thought, an impregnable fortress, a spiritual hospi- 
tal, a smiling, sparkling place : Mont Cassino, La 
Cava, Mount Athos, Mont Saint-Michel — innumer- 
able others, almost on every height. Our spiritual 
life, so easily shattered, had found for its restoration 
what we seek so laboriously, and what is really so 
simple : wealth of soul and poverty of body ! — the 
flesh, not despised, but governed ; the soul free ! 
— the hair-shirt where we employ the flesh-brush 
and massage, prayer instead of the Turkish bath. 
And these remedies were effectual, being loved, 
loved with a permanent and perpetual suggestion. 
The result was, along with the adorable and perfect 
science of forgetfulness, steadfast serenity in the 
present, unflinching hope for the future ! — a place 
in heaven instead of a numbered bed. 

All that is closed to us, assuredly — destroyed, 
replaced. But none of it need be destroyed or 
replaced. 

I chanced one morning to enter the church of 



THROUGH SORROW TO LOVE 303 

Notre- Dame-des-Victoires. The fane was dark ; a 
few candles were smoking without giving light. 
Alone, in the deepening dusk, the marble profile of 
a Woman bearing her Son, a figure of the Eternal 
Motherhood, stood out almost timidly, a blurred 
outline, upon an altar. But throughout the entire 
church, the whole length of the walls, what hiero- 
glyphics of life ! A thousand ex-votos in letters of 
gold, some veiled and nameless, others, so to say, 
all smiles : Thanks for recovered health ! Thanks for 
life ! Thanks for success in an examination ! Thanks 
for success in business ! Strange glimmerings of 
prayer, terrestrial incense licking these mystic walls 
as did once the fumes of petroleum during the Com- 
mune ! And, constantly, requests for health, for 
joy, for success in examinations ! — learning, money 
itself, leaning upon faith. There still exists, then, a 
terrestrial confidence in happiness ! What is it to 
the Immortals whether a son pass his examination, 
and enter Saint-Cyr or the Polytechnique ? But 
so it is : here, between the Place de la Bourse and 
the Bourse du Commerce, people have positively 
dreamed of a Bourse of happiness. And what 
found I upon those walls, I who entered in fulness 
of life, yet a suppliant of love ? An immense 
petition to God for power to do without Him ? 
For if these people obtained what they so vehe- 
mently besought, if they passed their examinations 



30 4 THE ART OF LIFE 

and entered at Saint-Cyr, or simply regained health 
and tranquillity, what need would they have of 
God ? I hear the whispered answer : a This thirst 
for happiness is just God's call." Sorrow is neces- 
sary to desire, because 'tis needful it should rise to 
prayer. And then I saw very clearly, methought, 
the general scheme of the whole art of life. 

The Platonists of old used to speak of two loves, 
or rather of two degrees of love — the terrestrial and 
the ideal, the prosaic and the poetic ; the sensual, 
sprung of the primitive carnal connection, and the 
purified, the amalgamation of souls, the fruit of the 
spirit's travail. Art consists in passing from the one 
to the other ; but more, it leads us to a third love, 
which is communion in the Universal. Sensualists, 
idealists, pure mystics alike only recognise one love, 
which they isolate from the others. In reality the 
human heart passes naturally through these three 
loves, almost as the water of a rill becomes a stream, 
then, uniting with another stream, becomes a river, 
and finally proceeds to its union with the sea. 

Sorrow is a necessity to the third stage. 

Sorrow is an evil ! And yet it must be admitted 
that sorrow purifies terrestrial love, restores it to us ; 
happiness would very readily become narrow, sel- 
fish, arrogant; it very rapidly forgets that love is 
born of participation, surrender, confession. Now, 
what confidence is more tender and profound than 



THROUGH SORROW TO LOVE 305 

that of grief ? What hope more general ? What 
sigh more profitably shared ? 

To suffer with one we love : that is really to 
possess him. 

Victor Hugo has charmingly depicted the delight 
of a blind man in the company of a beloved woman, 
in catching the rustle of her dress, in feeling the 
necessity of her sweet presence. It is the world's 
higher law that a mother devote herself to her 
child, and that the child, on reaching manhood, 
devote himself then to his mother in her old age 
and feebleness. That is the rule for us : love 
having for its effect that, of two beings, one lends to 
the other his activity and vigour. A sick person in 
your arms is almost as a child. His affection for 
you becomes so pure that it may express itself ten- 
derly. And you, his friend, refining your attach- 
ment till it becomes charity, suffer your heart to 
open, to dilate in delightful freedom, and to grow 
stronger. Love, in so far as it has anything eternal, 
blossoms out into this purification by devotion. A 
bed of suffering wears the aspect of an altar. The 
young sufferer, who gazes at us with trustful, loving 
eyes, — is she not as beautiful, and a thousand times 
more interesting, than the girl who frolics in a ball- 
room ? 

So likewise with the moral sufferings. There is 
an extraordinary charm in watching the develop- 



306 THE ART OF LIFE 

ment of a soul one loves, and in entering into its 
existence. Edgar Allan Poe declares that he knew 
a child who assimilated the thoughts of people by 
projecting himself into them, that is, by imitating 
with his own features the expression of theirs. Thus 
it behoves us to act : " A soul does not observe 
itself from without, but from within : to know it, 
one must enter into it, identify oneself with it, pene- 
trate it." 1 

To feel together, love together, suffer together, is 
sympathy, avv-iradelv. Darwin even holds that^we 
weep more freely and more abundantly for others' 
sorrows than for our own. 

The true formula of love is the supplication of 
the Stabat Mater: " Mother, fount of love, make 
me to feel thy grief, to weep with thee ! Cause me 
to bear the death of Christ, to share His Passion, to 
remember His afflictions — that I may be wounded 
with His wounds, and embrace the Cross with 
rapture, for the love of Thy Son ! " That is the 
supreme art : not to deny sorrow, not to be satis- 
fied with soothing it, but to share it ! 

Happy, then, he who has the gift of winning con- 
fidences and partaking sorrows ! How many even 
of physical ills may be cured simply by confessing 
them ! 

The physician comes, and observes a nervous 

1 M. Souriau. 



THROUGH SORROW TO LOVE 307 

condition, a capricious digestion, a disordered liver. 
Another physician comes, and notes the same 
symptoms, and all this evokes diagnoses more or 
less wide of the mark. At the Salpetriere, where 
so many hapless deranged folk are received, it is 
necessary to insist on confession. And as in these 
pitiful conditions the sick shrink from avowing the 
idea or the fact (however insignificant) which is 
subtly sapping their reason, recourse is sometimes 
had to hypnotic confession, during which the de- 
fenceless intellect answers almost automatically. 
Then to physical confession. 

But only the confession that is a delight, volun- 
tary, spontaneous, natural, is able to relieve ; that 
alone consecrates between patient and healer the 
bond of affection and confidence which allows the 
synthesis of the malady to be established. When we 
truly love, we do not always picture the beloved one 
merely on his best sides ; we want to find his feeble 
sides, which permit us to intervene in his life and 
assume part of his burden. And thus ripen the 
substantial affections, as fruit ripens on a tree with 
yellowing leaves, as the rose bursts forth among 
thorns, as the nightingale sings in a thicket. 
How many times, for instance, between a husband 
and wife who are divided, or at least indifferent, 
suffering thus creates the bond of pity, then of ten- 
derness, whence their affection springs into new 



308 THE ART OF LIFE 

life ! And true love is indeed transfigured by afflic- 
tion. Are you unfortunate ? You will lose friends 
little to be regretted. But a real sentiment will 
grow up, and we may always question whether a 
love is stable till it has been sealed by tears, for it 
delights in trial. When all is going well it evapo- 
rates, fritters itself away ; it dies of pleasure, but it 
lives on pain. And thereby it grows larger, and 
reveals itself as the prime necessity of life. If we 
enjoyed unbroken peace and tranquillity we might 
indeed refrain from love, but it is beyond our 
power to escape suffering, and then we are seized 
with an intense longing not to allow ourselves to be 
crushed by bitternesses, disappointments, anxieties, 
sorrows, a passion for combatting them with supe- 
rior weapons. This is the gate of heaven. 

The art of life has for its end the mingling of love 
with suffering. 1 Our life, alas ! resembles a never- 
ending vintage. Pass on, O women, vintagers 
divine, to distil from us the alcohol, the spirit, the 
juice of the fruit, and to reject the seed ! When 
we feel ourselves, so to speak, falling from the tree 
of life, then is the time for you to gather us, and 
transport us to that beautiful state of sorrow whence 
a purified life is born. 

1 Coleridge well describes his despondency on the day when he asks 
himself whether, if every one were rich and free, and pleasure were no 
longer heightened by struggle and privation, we should be happy, and 
is compelled to answer No. 



THROUGH SORROW TO LOVE 309 

"The soul that loves and suffers has reached 
sublimity." 1 

u Blessed are the poor in spirit ! 

" Blessed are those that mourn ! 

" Blessed are the meek ! 

" Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst 
after righteousness ! 

" Blessed are the merciful ! 

" Blessed are the pure in heart ! 

" Blessed are the peacemakers ! 

11 Blessed are they which are persecuted for 
righteousness' sake." 

Blessed are the feeling hearts, even when they 
suffer ! 

1 Victor Hugo. 



CHAPTER THE SIXTH 

THE GARDEN OF ROSES AND THE VALE OF TEARS 

" Life is only a bauble till disappointment 
makes it grave.'' — Chateaubriand. 

I will venture to go further, and, addressing my- 
self to women, take them to witness that sorrow 
itself may be lovely, that certain afflictions may be 
loved if they are felt to be fertile. 

O women, we hold out towards you our soul and 
our strenuous hands ! We have laboured and 
toiled : and lo ! now we are worn and spent. Our 
heart alone remains young : extend to us your 
little hands. It is you that were born to suffer, and 
also to bring suffering, and also to console. You, 
in whom life's transformations are effected ; you, 
guardians of our joys and their fruit ; you, our 
undoing and our redemption — you represent the 
divinity of sorrow. Sorrow, for us, is a stern law : 
it makes us irritable and impatient. But you 
have the marvellous secret of a sorrow that is 
profitable, exquisite, maternal. Sorrow withers 
us : you it nurtures into fruitfulness. Our weak- 
ness is worthy of pity, yours is strong, or at least 



THE GARDEN OF ROSES 311 

creates your strength ; we live for ourselves, and 
you for others ; our honour is to act, yours to 
surfer. The whole world issues from your tears : 
you are, as it were, the swaddling-bands in which 
our weaknesses are eternally enveloped. You re- 
deem us, because our weaknesses, physical and 
moral, are re-echoed in you. You are the sacri- 
ficial victims. You pay for all : for yourselves, your 
husbands, your children. 

If you have an ailing child, your heart flies to 
him : his sufferings are specially your own. One 
must be happy and in want of nothing to escape 
your sweet affection. Your gentleness embraces 
even death, aye, even your own death : " Madame 
was gentle towards death." 1 One of your sex 
wrote to St. Francis of Sales that it mattered little 
to her to what 'seasoning' God put her. Vainly 
does the material life set its brands upon you, vainly 
does it strike you in the inmost defences of your 
flesh, trample on your feelings, subject you to pain- 
ful infirmities and grievous servitudes : you blossom 
on this dunghill ! Your serenity still prevails over 
this woeful state. And it seems to you even that 
your lamp burns ever the brighter as it consumes 
all that once you were. " I early felt the need 
women have of being reasonable," said Madame de 

1 [Bossnet's saying of Henrietta of England, wife of Louis XIV's 
brother.] 



312 THE ART OF LIFE 

Lambert. What a hard saying ! yet how profound ! 
Reclining on your long chairs, you live on ideas. 
Limbs you have no longer, but you still have wings ! 
Your heart has glories which no scalpel will ever 
touch, lights which no human hand will ever ex- 
tinguish ! " To endure tribulations is strength ; to 
rejoice in them is wisdom." 1 

And thus it comes to pass that out of sorrow itself 
you make an art, for you grow to love it for what 
it wins you ; you run to it, as to a providence. 
In the cruel pangs of motherhood you sometimes 
cry that you " will never endure it again," and you 
endure it again continually ! Fate handles you 
with clumsy fingers, and yet sorrow brings you 
back to your joys. " He that hath not suffered 
knows not love." 2 And, in truth, woe to the 
women whom we know only through pleasure ! 
Without sorrow, we should not respect them ; the 
dream and the reality would be ever far apart; 
they would be neither our mothers, nor our wives, 
nor our dear true friends. Whereas, knowing 
how to suffer, having the gift of tears, you weep 
indeed with those that weep, you know how to 
comfort. Your instinct reveals itself in your talent 
for regaining, through the sorrow of others, pity 
and loving-kindness, those primitive forms of love ! 

1 St. Bernard. 2 Imitation of Christ. 



CHAPTER THE SEVENTH 

" EVERY LIFE HAS ITS ROMANCE AND ITS HISTORY" 

" Beaute sainte, Ideal qui germes 
Chez les souffrants, 
Toi par qui les esprits sont fermes 
Et les coeurs grands ! " 

— Victor Hugo. 
" He that loveth much is rilled with God." — 
St. Augustine. 

" Infinite love is the source of the slightest 
act of love, and, when we love with all our 
strength, we are in God and united with 
God." — Isaac Hecker. 

" It is with the natural virtues that the super- 
natural virtues are created." — Archbishop 
Ireland. 

If love is the substance of life, and if our happi- 
ness consists in continual progress towards life, 
the happiness which we are to create for ourselves 
when we leave affliction behind us will consist in 
finally imbuing life with love — love vast, imperish- 
able, inexhaustible ; in other words, in dropping 
into the natural human love a grain of the Absolute 
and Ideal, a love stronger than material existence — 
that seed of liberty and grace which M. Fouillee 
has so well denominated {t an anticipation of future 
liberty." Just as in the primary state there is 

1 Father Gratry. 
313 



314 THE ART OF LIFE 

scarcely any mean between enthusiasm and 
drunkenness, so here there is almost no mean 
between suicide and confidence in God. 

We need a future life, because without that life 
we cannot really live, because our ideas of hap- 
piness ultimately relate to an existence we do not 
possess, and because we have to defer to a vague 
to-morrow a good number of our spiritual needs. 

This is not a theory ; it is a truth of experience. 
All writers, without exception, acknowledge that 
life is but a sorry thing without faith in an ideal. 
I do not appeal, as I need hardly say, to the tes- 
timony of Christians such as Bossuet or Fenelon, 
or of quasi-Christians like M. Renan ; but to that 
of M. Auguste Comte, according to whom "the 
higher rules the lower," and of M. Emile Zola, 
when he rightly explains to the youth of our col- 
leges that Positivism too narrowly restricts the hori- 
zon, since it stops short at material truths. 

Statesmen of unimpeachable good faith have 
proclaimed the necessity of a supreme love as a 
staff of comfort in the struggles of existence, and 
as an element of moral superiority. 1 The last 
word of human vitality is to love the higher in- 
terests, 2 and to love them with such force, such 

1 " To have an ideal is to have a reason for living." (M. Leon 
Bourgeois, speech at the Grand Coucours, 1891.) M. Luzzati, eulogy 
of Mr. Gladstone at the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, 

2 St. Augustine. 



EVERY LIFE HAS ITS ROMANCE 315 

absolute infatuation, "that we can love nothing 
apart from what we love indeed and in truth." 1 
Possessing that secret, death itself comes to have 
no meaning. 

If the Ideal were a chimera, we should have 
to invent it. But the truest reality is thought, 
and the Ideal and thought are intimately inter- 
woven, since desire is an element of happiness. 
Our sentiments are constantly moving upon a 
lofty ladder, like the ladder of Jacob's dream : 
they ascend and descend, uniting us uninter- 
ruptedly with a great elusive mystery. Reason 
may recoil before this mystery, and deny it because 
it eludes its grasp ; but sensibility fills our soul 
with it, and, adopting a fine phrase of Claude 
Bernard's, it teaches us "to rock to the wind of 
the unknown in the sublimities of ignorance." 
Every soul has, so to say, mysterious pores, which 
are a pledge of life, because by them it breathes 
and aerifies itself : it is like the window of an 
attic, commanding an immense horizon which the 
eye fails to grasp : why should the inhabitant of 
the attic make it a point of honour to live without 
breathing, under the pretext that he knows not 
whence comes the air ; or without looking at any- 
thing, under the pretext that he cannot see every- 
thing, nor read the riddle of what he does see ? 

1 St. Bonaventure, Itinerary of the Soul to God. 



316 THE ART OF LIFE 

The sky that you perceive does not depend on 
you, it is true ; but it does not destroy your life : 
on the contrary, it overarches and nourishes it. 
Love of the ideal does not destroy the kindly 
sentiments ; it enhances them, nourishes them, 
elevates them. "To love oneself is to desire one's 
happiness ; to ^love oneself is to love God," said 
St. Augustine. A woman of high intelligence, the 
Marquise de Lambert, has exquisitely interpreted 
this philosophy : " Nothing makes more for happi- 
ness than to have the mind persuaded and the heart 
touched. . . . The heart is the source, and God 
the end, of all." Sentiment shines forth in our 
resplendent night like an unwearying star. That 
so many lives are drifting at the mercy of chance, 
so many men sailing without compass, reckless 
in joy, without strength in sorrow, is because they 
do not fix their eyes on the star. That is what 
Michelet, full of faith in human progress, meant 
when he wrote that some day "the world would 
be swept away in one breath from God." 

Finally, every great human love has a divine 
character, by virtue of which it renders a man a 
superior, invincible being. It corresponds to the 
character of the Christian religion, which is, not 
to annihilate, but to preserve, to govern, to guide, 
and to develop our faculties. Man rules human things 
without suffering himself to be defiled. That is the 



EVERY LIFE HAS ITS ROMANCE 317 

law and the prophets ; 1 and in a word, " all is good 
to those that love God." 2 

The heart becomes stable and steadfast ; work, 
quietly and lovingly done, becomes a consecration. 
" Stay me with flowers," said the Song of Songs 
long ago, " comfort me with sweet-scented fruits." 
The idea of God is indeed the object "on which 
all love centres," 3 the absolute beauty which in- 
forms things only by the love with which it 
endues them ; 4 the origin and the end of the 
love we bestow upon our fellow-creatures or re- 
ceive from them ; the ideal of love, " persuasive 
rather than commanding." 5 

How infinite the force of a sublime vision which, 
showing us things as they are, and casting into the 
shade all that should take second rank, clothes with 
a golden tissue the realities of life, and inspires us 
with courage, strength, ardour, enthusiasm ! 'Tis 
this vision, this romance of life, that I call ideal. 

1 St. Matthew xxii. 37-40 ; St. Mark xii. 30. 

2 Bossuet. 3 Ribot. 4 Plato, Aristotle, and others. 

5 M. Fouillee. 



CHAPTER THE EIGHTH 

MAMMON, OR LIFE? 

"Avoid overloading the stomach, which 
may excite concupiscence." — St. Bernard, 
Sermon 65. 

" Poverty, thou great monarch, thou hast 
the world in thy power, for thou dost hold 
sovereign sway of all the good things thou 
despisest. 

" Poverty, thou science profound! — scorning 
riches, the will in humbling itself rises an 
equal height towards liberty. 

"Gracious poverty, ever in opulence and 
joy." — Jacopone da Todi. 

"Life is like unto a deep river. Those 
who bear no burden get safe across. Those 
who lade their shoulders are drowned." — Little 
Flowers of St. Francis. 

"It is a fatal blunder in the lives of most 
of our contemporaries to believe that the more 
a man has, the more he enjoys. Our external 
liberties as citizens are constantly increasing ; 
but our internal liberties depart at the same 
rate : how many people there are who are liter- 
ally possessed by their possessions ! " — Paul 
Sabatier, St. Francis of Assisi. 

Are we, then, to lose ourselves in the clouds, and 
neglect life, or, let us say, the money which is its 
instrument ? 

Assuredly not. Money in itself is nothing, but 

318 



MAMMON, OR LIFE? 319 

it is worth just as much as the life in whose service 
it is employed. I do not think that mishap has any 
more respect for the lord in his sleeping-car than 
for the stoker on the engine or the plate-layer on 
the line. But still, poverty is not a blessing, and 
Christ Himself took pity on the people whose wine 
ran short on the wedding-day. 

Money is good, then, if it is the mintage of love, 
and not of parasitism ; if it does not hinder an 
officer from going to his death, or a priest from 
self-devotion ; if it be a servant. But if it commands, 
if we love it and are proud of it, if we believe that 
all things are its due and that it owes nothing, if 
it fosters presumption, arrogance, and insolence, 
if it sunders men into separate cities and quarters, 
then it merits the hatred it excites. 

Hail poverty ; and wealth, hail ! Blessings on 
whatever lives and has a reason for its being ! 
Blessings on the shepherd who is a friend to his 
flock, and the flock which is a friend to its shep- 
herd ! Blessings on captain and private both, since 
together they love the same thing : their native 
land ! But every truly Christian soul will have 
the aristocratic ambition to figure in life in its 
own raiment, and not in borrowed plumes. 

Money to-day shows a tyrannous aspect. It is 
the sole effective force. In all ages its incivilities 
have been the same ; but nowadays we have 



320 THE ART OF LIFE 

removed the check formerly supplied by manners 
and ideas. 

Interest warps everything ; and not merely the 
sensibility, but also, and with peculiar force, the 
spirit of justice and fair-dealing. Certainly, I am 
not a Socialist ; the Socialism of to-day appears 
to me a counter-appetite, rather than a counter- 
poise ; nay more, I firmly believe that individualism 
is the absolute basis of life. But when we have 
a livelihood, we ought to think ourselves happy, 
look higher, towards the universal, and give our 
life a nobler aim. We all of us overload our 
stomachs. We digest too much, and do not breathe 
enough. That is the gross blunder to correct. 
There will always be great fortunes which fulfil a 
social office : nevertheless, from the artistic point 
of view, it would perhaps be advisable to en- 
deavour to keep them, as a social trust, as much 
as possible in hands traditionally habituated to 
manage them without allowing themselves to be 
crushed. It is good for us to see some one living 
higher than money and the tariffs of life. 

We have no lack of money, but we do lack men 
who know how to use it and to justify their pos- 
session of it. Really, the queens of our time, the 
heiresses, ought, when buying their husband, to 
require evidence that he is a man, worthy of his 
poverty, and consequently of their wealth ! 



MAMMON, OR LIFE? 321 

Let us love money, that is, love him who 
produces it. Let us love the men who toil for 
their living — love them, not out of pity, or as 
a duty, but with real esteem, because they are 
in very truth men. Let us forgive them our 
good luck ! Their life, in truth, is not complex ! 
Necessity alone has harassed them, and that lends 
gravity to the soul. Want, haunting their bedside, 
has often sapped their vigour, destroyed their 
courage, sunk them in the quagmire of materialities. 
Where could they find refuge save in themselves ? 
And if they err, if they are sick and weary, it is 
still from their own life that they draw the strength 
to rise and press on. Ah ! necessity is a wonder- 
ful school ! l It is thither that we have to carry 
love, pardon, hope. But how could one respect a 
rich man whose whole thought was of increasing 
his pile, and whose every action was devised to 
that end ? 

1 "Behold me ! I have no country, no house, no goods, no slaves; 
I sleep on the bare earth ; I have no wife, no children, no means, but 
only the earth and the sky and one poor cloak. And what want I 
more ? Am I not without sorrow ? Am I not without fear ? Am I 
not free? When didst thou see me fail of reaching the object of my 
desire, or fall into that which I would fain have shunned? Have I 
ever reproached God or men ? Have I ever accused any man ? Have 
I ever a gloomy look? . . . Who is there, but, seeing me, thinks he 
beholds his lord and master ? " — Epictetus. 



CHAPTER THE NINTH 

HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 1 

"Christ did not come to destroy, but to 
perfect what is in man : the truths and graces 
of Revelation tend not less directly to the 
elevation of the present life than to the 
attainment of the future life." — Archbishop 



Ireland 
J 



" The sweetness of Thy creatures hath be- 
guiled my taste, and I did not perceive that 
Thy sweetness is more delicious than honey. 
It is Thou who hast given to honey and to 
every creature the sweetness proper to them, 
or rather it is Thou who hast lent it them. 
The sweetness of Thy creatures, considered 
as it behoves, invites us to come nearer 
to Thy eternal sweetness, O Jesus, source 
of all sweetness and of all love!" — St. 
Bon a venture, Soliloquy. 

" I prayed, and understanding was given 
me ; I called upon God, and there came to 
me a spirit of wisdom." — The Wisdom of 
Solomon. 

The work of Christianity has been to crown life 
with a sentimental worship. It instituted that last 
pathetic dialogue : " Lovest thou Me more than 
these ? " " Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love 
Thee." And a second time : (t Simon, son of Jonas, 

1 Emerson. 



" HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 323 

lovest thou Me ?" And yet a third time ; and the 
answer came : " Lord, Thou knowest all things ; 
Thou knowest that I love Thee"; and Peter was 
almost beside himself to hear the question thus 
repeated, for a person one loves can hardly be 
ignorant of it. And soon after, Peter betrayed 
Him ; but Christ loved even unto death. That is 
the philosophic epitome of life. 

Life is its own corrective. Reason does not give 
us happiness. Sensibility shows us a glimpse of it, 
but, even carried to its highest power, cannot secure 
it as a permanent possession. Pain and death teach 
us that all things pass away — all perishable things 
perish ; and even in our hours of joy we are 
troubled by forebodings. " By night on my bed 
I sought Him whom my soul loveth : I sought Him, 
but I found Him not. I will rise now, and go 
about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways 
I will seek Him whom my soul loveth." 

Our happiness depends on others — depends on 
too many things ! A day comes when it fades 
away. And then God (though we have abolished 
Him) resumes His governance of us, because, 
having known the thirst for a firm and stable senti- 
ment, we recognise in the divine will the true 
nourishment, the true remedy, the only living ideal, 
the love with which we imagined we had filled the 
life of the world, and which only existed in us. 



324 



THE ART OF LIFE 



Let us, then, have the wisdom and docility to 
cherish, without any subtlety, 1 a great love for God. 2 
I say " without subtlety " : it is the honour of our 
age that reason comes unconstrainedly to the sup- 
port of our beliefs ; but, here, only consolation, 
peace of mind, and forgiveness are in question. 
Philosophers, theologians, historians, will discuss 
the problems : that is their duty ; but along with 
this science there is an art, a gentle unassuming art, 
a woman's art, all naivete and candour, which con- 
sists in loving God, in imbuing with this love the 
simplest hearts, in glorifying the poor in spirit, in 
offering to men a hand dipped in holy water, in 
smiling upon them. It is so much easier to feel 
the necessary truths than to understand them ! Let 
us argue as little as possible, since man, though he 
cannot live without love, can live very well without 
argument. Even if certain parasitic legends dis- 
figure the theological tree, what does it matter when 
our quest is for the fruit ? We shall be taught that 
this or that saint never existed, that he lived in this 
age and not in that, that Madeleine never appeared 
in Provence, that Rene was never bishop of Angers. 
There are devotees, enthusiasts, dreamers, if you 
will, to whom all that is of no importance, so long as 
they find something to stir their enthusiasm. They 
would rather love a non-existent saint than an 



Madame de Chantal. 



Jean Peres, Vart et U riel. 



"HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 325 

empty niche, because the saint is themselves, the 
incarnation and sanctification of the deepest needs 
of their hearts. 

" But," I shall be told, " this resolves itself into 
a feminine paganism, into what St. Francis of Sales 
used to call the childish follies of imagination, the 
science of hair-splitting : it hangs everything upon 
the cassock of Father X or Father Y." 

God forbid! Heaven save us from certain modes 
of piety ! But, as you know, in France there exist 
two religions, just as there are two politics (for all 
the visible movements are governed by hidden 
springs, the masses are led through subterranean 
passages). Some men do the talking, others the 
acting, and in practice it is often, as Mill said, "the 
hour of women," owing to the fact that, beneath 
the scepticism we find it politic to assume, we are 
all at heart pursuing an ideal. A hundred years ago 
it was Athens, Rome, the Genie du Christianzsme. 1 
Now it is an army, a general, a foreign sovereign. 
Could we not contrive that women should take 
our religion in hand, at any rate in its externals, 
so as to broaden and beautify its ritual ? After all, 
true religion is not an element of strife or contro- 
versy ; it is that which tames the fierce, calms the 
impatient, consoles the unhappy, jinakes the avari- 
cious generous, the turbulent peaceable, the lost 

1 [Chateaubriand's famous work.] 



326 THE ART OF LIFE 

happy. One can accept a ready-made creed, and 
find joy in it. 

I know that most generous efforts are being made 
to satisfy us otherwise. People are toiling to create 
a popular art. Our streets already, despite the 
multitude of tram-cars, are swarming with cele- 
brated men and naked women. But what can 
be a popular art except the art of giving bright- 
ness to the actual life of the people by sincere and 
simple means ? 

Society at the present day has an essentially 
dramatic spirit. Yet the imagination of a country 
is not satisfied with the shows at a fair, nor even 
with the legs of young ladies on a larger stage. 
These give a momentary pleasure, but the people 
need a more serious leit-motif to penetrate their 
dreary life with a note of beauty and order and the 
absolute. Such inspiration is needful even on the 
benches of a school ; then, whether the school- 
boy become a poor hind or a prosperous farmer, 
his life in its gravest interests must knit itself into 
the universal ; a moral electricity must illumine, 
however faintly, the great facts, — death, marriage, 
birth. 

Stay, are we not all, to this degree, of the masses ? 
Do we not need, before we can attain to a perfect 
endurance of life, to lose the notion of time and 
finitude, to enter, we too, into the universal and the 



"HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 327 

eternal, like this fine motet or that fine picture, 
which have no age, since they live and touch men 
always ? Is it not precisely this that conditions our 
actions and our health ? Perhaps we should have 
better digestions if some beautiful grace, beautifully 
pronounced, gave to our dinners something of 
dignity and calm ! This is what the popes so well 
understood when they dreamed of making Rome 
the aesthetic capital of the world. Some of them 
may have pushed the idea too far*; still, they did 
build St. Peter's. 

Women might render us immense assistance 
in our struggle against the forces of barbarism, 
merely by insisting on the need for the ideal. We 
hold too cheap the refinements and elegances of 
life. At our present rate, it will not be long before 
none but the clergy in France receive any culture 
in the ' humanities/ or have a thought for anything 
but commerce or colonisation. 

Everything points to women as the ministers of 
the religion of sentiment and beauty ; they are 
moved by the ideal and attracted by the ultimate 
mystery of things. In the fifteenth century, in the 
remotest depths of the most rural part of France, 
the ribald Villon shows us a good woman to whom, 
every Sunday, a certain fresco, representing Paradise 
and Hell, gave a thrill of paour 1 or of joye et Hesse? 

1 [Terror.] 2 [Joy and mirth.] 



328 THE ART OF LIFE 

This fresco touched the poor old creature to the 
quick ; she imbibed, as it were, its very marrow ; 
the church in those days seemed a drawing-room, 
where everybody, whole or sick, merry or sad, 
found the perception of the beautiful. Those, too, 
were the days when they would carry the mon- 
strance out into the open air, into the sunny harvest 
fields, a procession of splendid vestments, chaunts, 
psalms, ideas — communion between earth and 
heaven. We may say what we will ; call it irra- 
tional, senseless, childish, this processional circuit 
of the fields ; [but it was useful, and probably is 
useful still. 

" To gaze into the heavens is an achievement. . . . 
Unreflecting, hasty minds say : i What avail these 
immobile faces to pierce the mystery ? What end 
do they serve ? What do they accomplish ? Alas ! 
in presence of the obscurity that compasses us 
about and looms upon our path, ignorant as we 
are of what the great upheaval will make of us, we 
answer : ' There is perhaps no sublimer work than 
that which these souls are doing.' And we add : 
'There is perhaps no toil more useful.'" 1 

Useful ? To whom ? First of all, to themselves. 
Look at these women carrying banners ; some are 
plain, sickly, visibly tried by existence, others in 
all the fulness of youth and innocence. Well, but 

1 Victor Hugo. 



" HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 329 

if we see on these faces one ray of concentrated 
joy, one flash of life, it proves the existence there 
of an impressionism useful, even beside the Moulin- 
Rouge. There is here something more than theatri- 
cality. 

Again, useful to whom ? Even to us who fancy 
we are laughing ! In a charming analysis of La 
Tristesse contemporaine, M. Fierens-Gevaert describes 
the singular emotion he experienced, sceptic as he 
is, and pessimistic, but an artist, when one day, 
by the strangest of chances, he entered a church 
where a number of girls were being catechised. 
He had sought everywhere for a fresh sensation 
of moral serenity, and he found it here, without 
seeking for it, during the singing of a simple hymn. 
Perhaps we no longer have spirits primitive enough 
to enjoy these unforced impressions. So much the 
worse. But we should always have one hour of 
sacred music during the week, to ventilate our 
thoughts. 

Ah no ! it was not an absolutely foolish thing 
to place our life, as did our forefathers, under the 
aegis of a sentimental worship, an ideal of woman- 
hood, a Virgin Mother, at once perfect maid and 
perfect mother, and to inscribe on our altars the 
maxims of the aesthetes, the Platonists, the Chris- 
tians of the Renaissance : "To love is to know I" 1 

1 Trithemius. 



330 THE ART OF LIFE 

" Love is the first and the chief cause of our sal- 
vation." * For that worship existed all the flowers, 
the enthusiasms, the haunting melodies, the pre- 
cious reliquaries, and the vast cathedrals ; it was the 
sweetness, the early blossom of the world. The 
gravest voices celebrated love as the crown of life. 
"O happy day," said one to the faithful soul, 
" when Mary, the Mother of the Lord, shall come 
to meet thee, surrounded by a choir of virgins, 
and the Bridegroom Himself shall approach thee 
with all His saints, and shall say : ' Rise up, my 
love, my fair one, and come away ; for lo ! the winter 
is past, the rain is over and gone! Then will the 
angels behold thy glory with amazement, and will 
say among themselves : ' Who is this that cometh 
up from the wilderness , leaning upon her beloved?' 
The daughters of Zion shall see it and show forth 
thy praise. The hundred and forty and four 
thousand blessed ones who stand always before 
the throne and the four and twenty elders shall 
take their harps and sing a new song. Then thou 
shalt cast thyself without fear into the arms of 
the Bridegroom, and shalt cry with exceeding joy : 
'/ have found him whom my soul loveth ; I hold 
him and will not let him go! " 2 That, dear ladies, 

1 Sadolet. 

2 This passage, with its quotations from the Song of Solomon, is taken 
from St. Bonaventure's Soliloquy. 



" HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 331 

should be the goal of your lives, according to 
the Christians. 

It was for this that you were consecrated by 
Christ Himself. He yearned to draw us to love. 
Over and over again in the course of His wander- 
ing life He is seen laying upon you His joys and 
sorrows. He delights in receiving your hospitality ; 
He heals your diseases, sympathises with your 
griefs, absolves your hearts ; He loves her who 
anoints Him with her perfumes ; He is with her 
who has lost a piece of silver. While men believe 
Him still in the tomb, lo ! a woman meets at the 
gate of a mysterious garden One whose heart is 
not dead, and who brings her joy. It seems ('tis 
St. Augustine's assertion) that Christ always had 
faithful women to help Him, and when His 
Apostles set out for the conquest of the world, 
again it was you women who went before them. 
Your hearts were their escort, and your hands 
served them. And then again, throughout the long 
series of the great ages of religion, every time a 
lofty figure appears, a redeemer or tamer of the 
people, the figure is double : man and woman, 
head and heart ; St. Francis of Assisi and Claire, 
Jeanne de Chantaland St. Francis of Sales, and how 
many more in this triumphant litany of divine 
love : one might almost repeat Fenelon's saying, that 
Adam's sin was in truth necessary to the divine order ! 



332 THE ART OF LIFE 

So continue ye ! Preserve for us the beauty of 
the world ! 

We sometimes lose ourselves in our need of 
beauty and of illusion. 

" Nous sommes les flocons de la neige dternelle 
Dans l'eternelle obscurite." * 

A shadow wraps us round, an immense shadow, 
the shadow of ourselves, and vainly do we lift our 
eyes towards the sombre depths of heaven. You 
show us the light : verily it is through you that the 
heart of the Most High speaks to us. 

Bring out all that is divine in our existence, and 
teach us to forget the rest. Thus we do after a 
journey : we forget its vexations, and joyfully re- 
call its pleasant hours. The artist whose eye 
searches a landscape makes its poetry articulate ; 
he selects, mayhap heightens, certain delicate 
features, and ignores the rest. Such is the 
religious art. 

Life has its honey, its sweetness. To draw out 
the steadfast activity yielded by purity of con- 
viction 2 and ideal emotion 3 — that is the grand 
work ! Mysticism is not here in question : we 
are neither angels nor brutes : we have only to 
mount upwards by natural paths till we reach 
that glorious summit where we believe in God, 

1 Victor Hugo. [" We are flakes of eternal snow in eternal darkness."] 

2 Le Play. 3 Alexander Bain. 



"HITCH YOUR WAGGON TO A STAR" 333 

and where the future is not dreaded but hoped for 
— like the bird 

" Qui sent ployer la branche et qui chante pourtant, 
Sachant qu'il a des ailes." * 

So much the better if happiness leads on to 
greater happiness, love to love. 2 But if you en- 
counter pain or sacrifice, passion indeed will give 
you wings. It is thus that all heroisms are ex- 
plained : the smile of the dying mother to her 
new-born child, the cheer of the dying soldier for 
his flag, deaths on other fields, and certain lives 
more terrible than death. 

1 [" Which feels the branch swaying, and yet sings on, knowing that 
it has wings."] 

2 " Do you not think that a heart in which the faculty of love had 
been cultivated and guided in Christian ways would thereby be the 
better disposed to rise from the human but sacred affections to the 
supreme Love, which is God?" — Dupanloup. 

In support of this sentence many instances might be adduced. Let 
us content ourselves with one, the admirable Recti d'une sceur of 
Madame Craven. In quite another direction we may mention the 
letter written from her prison by Madame Roland to Buzot, whom 
she loved : " I will not say that I went to meet my persecutors ; but 
it is true that I did not avoid them."— O. Greard. 



CONCLUSION 

"A man simple and pure comes to thee 
at his heart's behest : 'tis thy saviour." — 
Wagner : Parsifal. 

" Blessed is the woman who can say, with 
Job, ' I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I 
to the lame.' " 

I DO not claim, in this little book, to have dis- 
covered a new world, nor to have sketched a 
picture of women's influence the realisation of 
which is either impossible or even difficult. I 
have only analysed a number of simple facts, of 
almost daily occurrence. We see the fruits of 
reason and those of sensibility succeeding each 
other in our life almost as unvaryingly as the 
seasons, as regularly as day and night. Starting 
itself from reason, the world is perpetually giving 
birth to love, desire. We men bear the burden of 
reason ; 'tis woman, the handmaid of sensibility, 
laden eternally with the joys and sorrows of man- 
kind, who accomplishes her mission in building up 
happiness for us. If I may hazard the metaphor, 
man digests, woman breathes. That is the sub- 
stance of my reflections. 



CONCLUSION 335 

It remains only to insist on this point — that the 
fulfilment of their mission is for women the surest 
means of establishing their own happiness. 

This empire of sensibility, in which they are to 
reign, is of immense, almost boundless extent ; it 
comprehends all that adorns life, all that touches 
man, from the painting of his house to the loftiest 
speculations in metaphysic ; from the art of personal 
happiness, which is the principal thing, to the social 
art. It is, in short, the religion of beauty and the 
art of its ritual. If there is anywhere a land that 
is led by reason, that land cuts itself adrift from 
woman's empire ; but wherever gentleness and 
loving-kindness have any influence, the women 
have to organise, each in her own sphere, the 
worship of the Ideal, and to infuse love into the 
common affairs of life, especially those that are 
dreary. 

No wonder that some women flinch from a task 
so vast. Physical maternity, indeed, seems to them 
a quite natural function ; but when we speak to 
them of a moral maternity, they wonderingly pro- 
test, sometimes fearing that to conceive and bear 
ideas is too heavy a responsibility, and apparently 
not very sure how the thing is to be done. 

And yet, even assuming that all women attain 
to it, physical maternity soon ceases ; whereas 
moral maternity knows neither age nor limitations. 



336 THE ART OF LIFE 

Old and young, married and unmarried, rich and 
poor, you women have to strengthen your own 
hearts by, nourishing the hearts of others. And 
this mission, it may be said, implies a real privi- 
lege. Do you really believe that all men find 
it a delightful thing to remain in the imminent 
deadly breach, armed cap-a-pie against their neigh- 
bours, lest they be vilified, tricked, robbed, tor- 
mented, devoured ? We are not allowed to live 
in quietness ; if there be near us a being who is 
inferior to us, he is sure to charge us with respon- 
sibility for his inferiority. He would receive with 
laughter and scorn any talk about the ideal. And 
as to you, I do not say that you "are above all 
attack ; but I do say that (unless you turn men) 
you are encompassed by a sort of truce of God ; 
you are exempt from the virile service of hate ; 
in general, you are under no compulsion to fight 
for money, or power, or fame ; you have the right, 
almost the duty, of setting up your rest in the 
sphere of beauty ; your exquisite part is to love. 
Tell me, is this a thing to lament ? 

Nay, this moral maternity, when once it has been 
tasted, is found to be so full of charm, that noble 
women of the past were beset, I think, like their 
sisters in the Scriptures, by the temptation to leave 
gladly to subordinates, to servants, the physical 



CONCLUSION 337 

operations of motherhood ; but they never believed 
that they had reached the limit of their moral 
motherhood, their giving birth to ideas through 
love. Needless to say, we do not beseech and 
urge you to go that length ; but if those ladies had 
wit and spirit, you have quite as much, and the 
joys they tasted you might have also. 

You do not know how to set about the task ? 
Yet it is not difficult. Can you no longer find 
beings who are yearning for life ? Throughout the 
wide world are there no more luckless, unhappy 
people — outcasts, criminals, men crushed and 
spent ? Has strife vanished from the earth ? 
Have men ceased to feel the urgent necessity of 
making life a pleasant and lovely thing ? 

Cries of hatred assail your ears : do not stop 
to ask if these wailful sorrows are merited or not. 
Deliberately impress upon yourselves the fact that 
ingratitude will be your reward ; and be love, not 
for the thankless, but for yourselves, since love is 
the reason of your existence, the secret of your per- 
sonal happiness, something you can never do with- 
out. Who knows ? — perhaps in time loving-kind- 
ness may become one of your accomplishments. 
Nothing is lost in this world : the sweet perfume of 
good deeds floats in the atmosphere, and some one 
will surely come and sip of this honey. Moreover, 



338 THE ART OF LIFE 

time is so fleeting. At certain hours, when those 
who seem the faithful followers of the wise man 
deny him and plot against him, love alone subsists. 
Though they had paid to Christ no vows of fidelity, 
was it not women who, when men forsook Him 
and fled, had the sublime folly to love their Lord 
boldly even unto the end ? 

Be love, for your own sakes, the sake of your 
happiness, of assuring your existence. For the 
maternal instinct is so perfect in you that, if 
life made no response to it, you would be as 
aimless wanderers in a wilderness. Something 
would be wanting to the world, but you would 
find that still more was wanting in yourselves. 
You are not entirely happy, Madam ! . . . And 
all this gloom and dreariness, this long train of 
moral ailments, anaemias, gastric disorders, which 
afflict so many of your sisters, body and soul — do 
not they arise mainly from the fact that women 
are an army of the unemployed ? No one under- 
stands them, no one gives them the serious atten- 
tion they would like ; they lack moral stamina, 
and endure the brutalities of life without becom- 
ing reconciled to them. It would be a huge mis- 
take to believe that this is a chimera of the 
imagination : their whole being witnesses to the 
reality of the evil. 



CONCLUSION 339 

Let me sum up the whole matter by a simple 
observation drawn from hospital experience. 1 A 
lady, whose married life was unhappy, was subject 
to attacks of nervous irritability and mental de- 
rangement, coupled with trouble of the digestive 
and respiratory organs. At the hospital she was 
cured by being set to attend another patient. 
She was sick for want of some object of devotion, 
because she could not love, because only the 
i animal ' was required of her. She knew no- 
thing of a mind at rest, a soul exempt from the 
trivial ; and in truth she was not aware of her 
deficiency, having neither refinement nor delicacy. 
In devoting herself to another, she recovered her 
balance. Of her own accord she offered to go 
from time to time to see her husband. She could 
thus give herself completely, without anything 
having to suffer. She was alive. 

That is why we can bid you to be mothers 
and to live. Try as you may to act otherwise, 
you will never rid yourselves of your heart. You 
have in you a mine of sensibility which none 
will ever succeed in exhausting. Use it, then, in 
your own interest. In your social vocation you 
have exercised a social, a collective charity. For 
yourselves, exercise personal charity. Be passion- 

1 M. Paul Janet. 



340 THE ART OF LIFE 

ately, blindly, charitable, since your life, your 
happiness, are at stake : consecrate yourselves per- 
sonally to well-doing under all its forms, even in 
the life of the world : there will always be around 
you innumerable poverties, physical or moral ; be 
angels of love, even if, considering the fragility 
of affection's bonds, you should come to look from 
perhaps too lofty a height upon the incivilities of 
daily existence. 

Where should the ideal find anchorage if not in the 
heart of women ? 

If the Commissioner of Police is not acquainted 
with all the wrong-doers, happily he is very far from 
knowing all the Sisters of Mercy. 

And we, if we meet with these elect creatures 
whose feet do not touch earth, who flit by as in a 
sunbeam, let us not hale them back to life : let 
us rather conspire to keep them in ignorance that 
there are infamous men, that at all events no one is 
perfect, that nothing is absolutely desirable, that all 
our strivings evaporate in results that are hardly 
worth the pains they cost. They accomplish a 
divine dream. They believe in a higher hope, since 
this hope is necessary. They embody the true 
divine law, that bids them shut their eyes to evil, 
to love all things with a splendid injustice, to 
respond to human harshness only with the gift of 



CONCLUSION 341 

themselves, to cause flowers of grace and redemp- 
tion to spring up beneath their feet, to permit 
us to live and to find something beautiful every- 
where. 

By this faith, by this confidence, you will set your 
affections above the assaults of the vulgar. 1 

From this present time, that fleets so rapidly away, 
you will derive a life full of ideal events and emo- 
tions of the utmost durability. You will stir within 
us, all and sundry, a passionate love for one thing, 
the Unique and the Eternal. Above the necessary, 
the useful, you will glorify sensibility. In trial as in 
joy, if we are to extend and replenish our life, we 
must find ourselves again and again near the object 
of our love ; and as the earthly affections are never 
very numerous, or very passionate, nor are they 
immortal, it is for you to blend with them an ideal 
love, a savour of indestructibility and tenderness, so 
that sensibility may resolutely fulfil its office and 
yield strength and reason ever as its fruits. And 
this is but to say that the joy of this world is to fill 
by aid of enthusiasm the voids life makes in the 
heart ; to consecrate oneself, to love, to believe ; it 

1 " In your estate," said St. Vincent de Paul to the first Daughters 
of Charity, "you make profession of giving your life for the love of 
God and the service of your neighbour. Is there any deed of love sur- 
passing that ? After that can you love any other thing but your voca- 
tion, and will you not increase in this love ever more and more?" 



342 THE ART OF LIFE 

is hope and love springing from a living faith in 
God. 

Happiness is a temporal love, having eternal 
roots; a love that finds that which it seeks, and can 
still hope for that which it possesses. 



THE END 



Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &> Co. 
Edinburgh <&> London 



